Six months in - LPN @ 90-bed LTC. Is it me?

[mimigins]

So I guess I need to vent a little bit.

I graduated from the LPN program in May 2014, and got my first nursing job at a Retirement home in July 2014. Pretty good turnaround, and I was ecstatic since I hadn't even received a callback from the other 50~ jobs I'd applied to in that span.

So now I'm 6 months in and most days this week I've fantasized about going into a corner and crying. Granted, I've caught the flu from my residents, but I'm not sure that's the whole issue.

My job involves providing meds and nursing care to all 90 residents in 8-hour shifts. There is one charge nurse in the building at a time (me) along with a handful of care workers. That's it. Most of my residents are fairly independent or a 1-person assist, but there's a good chunk of them that are total care and require feeding. So it's more of a retirement slash LTC home without the pay to go with it.

Now - it's flu season. So far I'm the only nurse to get sick, and I'm the newest, so I've been trying my best to work my scheduled shifts but I ended up having to call in sick Wednesday (fever + cough + bad time), to the great annoyance of my supervisor as she ended up having to cover for me on her week off. I only have about 3 possible people that could cover me at a time - for the most part we have 2 day nurses, 2 evening nurses, and 2 night nurses and half of them aren't familiar with the other shifts. I went in to work today, but I'm still coughing a lot with an elevated temp so I got someone to cover my shift tomorrow so I can try to get some rest and recover.

I don't know - is it me? My boyfriend keeps trying to reassure me that I'm in a highly stressful environment and that taking care of 90 residents per shift is unreasonable. I'm exhausted. I don't sleep very well - I dream about going to work half the time. I'm just so frustrated because I don't feel confident in my skills and I'm pretty much independently working and trying to do my best. I just feel like a total failure because I'm still making mistakes or poor judgement calls - like going to work today at all while I'm still sick and risking spreading it to my residents. And yet when I tried to make a different call I was given a hard time by management about getting someone to cover me.

It just feels like the odds aren't stacked in my favor at all. Maybe I need a new job?

[Rena85]

Man I'm so sorry to hear about that. I can only imagine what it must be like since I currently do clinicals at a lot of LTC's and sometimes just trying to do treatments on half the patients in the building can be stressful and time consuming. I wish you the best and hope things turn around for you.

[michelle15]

Wow, 90 residents. That is a lot! I have 21-28 depending on what unit I am working my 8 hour shift, and I have trouble some days. I would check into the regulations and see if that is even safe for you to be doing.

[kbrn2002, ADN, RN]

What kind of insanity is this? 90 residents! How is that even possible? Even if 2/3 of them don't receive any meds or require any nursing care that's still a heavy load.

[mimigins]

They all receive meds - they're prepackaged by pharmacy to help, but it lowers the ability to double-check them before distribution because of the number of them. I think all but 3 people get meds.

You basically memorize treatments for everyone because there's no time to check MARS before so-and-so gets their 8AM meds, ventolin, flovent, etc.

It's a pretty memory-heavy job. I'm so tired.

[kbrn2002, ADN, RN]

Wow, that's just nuts! To answer your last line..."Maybe I need a new job?" HELL yes, you need a new job! Run, don't walk!!