The Nurse Recovery Model: What They Never Taught Us About the Care Plan
- gldavisgl9
- Jul 16
- 2 min read
The Nurse Recovery Model: What They Never Taught Us About the Care Plan
By Glennae Davis, RN
July 16th 2025
If you ask most nurses what they hated most in school, you’ll get the same answer:Care plans.
They were tedious. Time-consuming. Often disconnected from the chaos we faced on the floor.
But now, years later—after being pushed out of a job, ignored by systems I once served, and nearly broken by burnout—I realize that care plan saved my life.
Not the school-issued template.Not the NCLEX rubric.But the framework.
The discipline.The clarity.The strategy.
And I turned it into something new:A six-step protocol to help nurses recover—not just from symptoms, but from systems.
🧠 What They Never Told Us
No one told us care plans were built for liberation.
No one said,“This will teach you how to think your way out of chaos.”“This is how you’ll one day fight for your own health, license, and sanity.”
Instead, we rushed through it. Checked boxes. Memorized phrases.Meanwhile, we were internalizing the most powerful skill a nurse can have: structured critical thinking.
Not just for patients.But for ourselves.
💡 From Burnout to Blueprint
In 2012, I hit my wall.The discrimination, the gaslighting, the unrealistic expectations—it was all too much.
And therapy didn’t speak my language.HR didn’t defend my truth.Medicine wanted to diagnose and sedate me.
So I went back to what I knew.God.The law.And the care plan.
From that, I created the Glennae Davis Nurse Recovery Model™—a six-step roadmap to help nurses navigate:
Workplace stress
Anxiety and depression symptoms
Discrimination and retaliation
Medication injury
Risk of license loss
Because you don’t need a psychiatric label to rest.You need a plan.
⚖️ Six Steps That Save Careers
Here’s what it includes:
Root Cause Assessment – because it’s not always “depression”
Differential Nurse Diagnosis Method™ – separate clinical burnout from moral injury
Health Outcome Alignment – define what healing actually looks like
SMART Recovery Planning – use strategy, not shame
Targeted Burnout & Equity Intervention – because protected classes need protected recovery
Strategic Reintegration Phase – you don’t just go back, you return restored
This is more than documentation.It’s deliverance.
So to every nurse who thought care plans were a waste of time:You were just practicing for your own breakthrough.
I do the work that I do hoping to rewrite these stories—giving God the glory, not medicine.
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