Best Hopes to Preferred Futures: Translating Burnout with Nursing Orientated Solution Focused Conversations

The authors are trained nurses who have worked with, researched and taught vulnerable groups in mental health and learning disabilities in a variety of settings, and like many health and social care professionals, also experienced the effects of burnout. In this article, they explore solution focused (SF) conversations and their use in the issue of burnout in nursing. First, the authors consider the current literature on nursing burnout to set a scene for appreciating how SF offers a different conversational approach for nurses. Second, particularly, concepts of ‘best hopes’, ‘preferred futures’ and other useful techniques of ‘difference’ aim to help nurses re-evaluate burnout. Once practitioners begin to translate some of the SF theory into conversational practice, they can build a different relationship with what it means to be burnt out. And third, the authors offer a few figures and infographics on how to translate SF conversations to nurses who, given the chance, are more than capable of ‘ferrying themselves’ and others through the murky waters of burnout.