RNs pack hearing,renew call for staffing bill.......... - Page 2

I am a newbie still, 1 year and a half in the game. 11months Med-Surg then txfr'd to the ICU critical care program so after a rotation on StepDown I'm now a month or so into my ICU orientation (approx 4 months long). My hospital as a union...never seen a rep honestly...contract been in negotiations since before I started working there...

Crazy thing is as the newbie I was trying to stir the flame in the beginning, like 'we have to stand together and say no to the 9th patient', 'clock out no lunch' when we drink juice to keep our blood sugar up and chart and only use the bathroom when we are near accident. But they just said "no it wont work", complain to each other and suck it up when bosslady comes around. These women and men were old enough to be my parents...and if these were my parents I would tell them they were punking out. I saw similar fire in the many new RNs that came after I did...and sadly it often went...

Now that I am new to yet another place I'm bottom of the stack but I see RNs that run circles around some Docs I've met and I see our trauma docs and neuro guys come to the bedside and ask RNs what they need. What I see now in the ICU makes me see how mismatched this really are...

Sometimes I feel like I'm going mad bc I had no idea nursing was gonna be like this. I love what I do but the state of things breaks my heart. I've never wanted to be anything else but a nurse, this is my life now. I'm willing to fight for my worth, I just wish more of my nursing family would do the same...

Sorry for the rant...had to let it out... ::smile:: Crazy me but when I learned to critically think I applied it to all things...and from my assessment sumthin aint right folks... Am I right, or am I right?

Nurses have power but are either not comfortable with it or not sure how to use it. ICU nurses must be very autonomous to not get overwhelmed so I'm never surprised. That being said they also have historically the only guaranteed ratios with out a union contract outside of California.
It is sad to say but you can see here in these forums nurses have this strange way of holding on to these bad employers. I often joke that if conditions were this way at their children's school they would be all over that principal & school board like white on rice.

I hope you never lose that fire. Nurses don't deserve to be treated so poorly. Remember a union is only a tool. The nurses themselves have to learn to enforce that contract or it's just useless.