No More Bedside Nursing, I Quit!

WARNING: NEGATIVE NURSING POST (and these are my experiences only):

I've been an RN for 31 years. My experience has been that although hospitals pay great lip service to respecting nursing, they do not. And, unfortunately, I think this is true in even facilities who promote themselves as magnet hospitals.

I had only ever worked in the nursing field when I took a job in marketing. What an eye opener. I found that there is actually a place in the hospital where employees are respected, allowed to take their breaks (I mean, they actually got an hour break for lunch in their eight hour day), allowed to linger over coffee, had the supplies and staffing required to do the job; they did not have to punch a time clock.

I just recently graduated with my BSN in '04. i will be completing my 1st year this october working as a Registered Nurse. After 1 year working on the floor i have decided i'm going to quit bedside nursing. I worked for 8months in Boston on an acute medical surgical floor(eve shift). We had extreme staff shortage and not enough nursing assistance on the floor. I'm currently in Georgia in a "prestigious" hospital, facing the same problem in a step-down surgical icu. On this floor they have 30 patients, 2 nursing assistance and 6 patients ( very sick patients) to a nurse. Nurses have to get report do their own vs and even do morning care, pass out meds, prep patients for OR, and each nurse usually gets an average of 3 admissions per day. I spent 4 years in college learning about the art of nursing and i can't practice 1/2 the things i learned. Talk about hypocracy. Hospitals don't care about their nurses well being. I'm extremely burned out and exhausted after each shift and underpaid. I thought the hard part was the nursing school, it seems as if it gets worst after you graduate. My friend was just telling me one time she was running back and forth on the floor, she fainted and she had a heart attack. I'm 23 years old i'm smart enought to realize this is not for me early on. My sister who is 25 w/ 1 year experience agreed with and said she can't do it anymore. She is actually going back to school to do Legal nursing. I love the act of caring in nursing but if i stay on the floor i will eventually hate nursing and i don't want that. So what are my options here, what can i do with a RN, BSN degree if i don't want bed side / hospital nursing. I'm already considering private duty nursing, anything else i can do?

If you want to get out of the hospital, you could always look into home health/public health, clinic work, etc.