Compassion, easily lost?

[xoxJanexoxDoexox]

After weeks of poking and proding from family and friends..I can't hide it anymore. I am terrified. In the 4 months since finishing school I have yet to fill out even one application. It's not that I don't want to work or that I'm lazy. I think it's the fact that my clinicals left me scarred. There were so many times my preceptor for the day was catty, rude or downright mean. I've seen nurses talk about their coworkers behind their back, in front of other nurses, students and even patients. Come out of a patients room and leave the door slightly ajar..then loudly tell whoever is closest how crazy or annoying the patient is. I've seen them man handle little old ladies and scared children. I have had one tell me how a patient didn't really want the assistance they had asked for because they were lazy. Looking back just makes me wonder, where did the compassion go? Were these women always this way or did the stress of huge patient loads, mean doctors, ungrateful patients and endless overtime the true culprits? Why would anyone want to start a career in nursing if it has the ability to strip away your compassion? How many conniving coworkers, needing patients and stressful shifts will it take before i crack..If there is one thing I take pride in (and its not brains or beauty) it's my ability to feel empathy and provide compassionate care. Do you still have compassion? How do you keep hold of it when many aspects of your job are trying to pull it from you?

[IrishErin]

Try walking out of an unsuccessful resus to check on your other patients and be greeted by the guy with chronic dental pain complaining about the long wait and demanding to know when the doctor will be in to see him meanwhile, someone across the hall is grieving the loss of their husband/father/brother.[/quote']

A patient once had the gall to leave the area he was in, pull open the curtain where his nurse was in the middle of doing compressions on a coding patient, tap her on the shoulder (again, WHILE she was doing compressions) and ask for a Tylenol. Hard to NOT get frustrated with people like that.

[Guest941822]

Thanks for posting this, because I have wondered the same. I am a compassionate person and don't want to work in a field where I lose that. But maybe I don't have to.