I don't think I hate Med-surg, but I think I do.

I've been an RN for 7 months now in a Med-Surg unit. I'm just so burned out with it all so far working in med-surg . Our hospital's med-surg unit has your typical med-surg patient but throw in inmates, telemetry, and OB patients there as well, and patients who are just there and they are DNR and just waiting for their time to pass.

I'm tired of patients asking for pain meds around the clock, especially the inmates who are always in pain and want their morphine or other opiate-type pain meds or patients with a hx of drug use and a sa result they want their opiate pain med on the clock as it is ordered.

I'm tired of rude families who are so demanding sometimes.

The amount of paperwork in med-surg is just too much, and I spend most of my time giving meds, doing paperwork, and not enough time with the patients, which is very frustrating.

Plus, sometimes I end up passing work I didnt do to the day-shift nurse, which I hate. I really hate it, because I want to finish all I can so I dont pass what I didnt finish to the next-shift nurse.

Most of the time, i am assinged with an LVN, I get my 5-6 patients, the LVN gets their 5-6 patients as well. But really, the RN is responsible for all those 12 patients, and sometimes I give report to all those 12 patients to the next shift because some of the lvns i work with are slow and dont finish their work before the day shift staff comes in.

I only take 30 minutes or less for a lunch break, and I dont even take my two 15 minute breaks.

The last 2 hours are the busiest because anything will go wrong and the patients can get demanding. IV's will go bad and the sorts, you name it, anything that can go wrong will go wrong.

I dont think time management is the issue for me. I have a decent average time management skills. When I work by myself where I am assinged my own patients, I can get everything done no problem. But when I am assinged with an LVN, its hard especially if those patients require a lot of work.

My plan was to spend 2 years in med-surg, but now I am considering just 1 year.

But i'm not a quitter, I enjoy working with the patients, but majority of the time, those above situations that I describe above happens almost every night.

Any tips and suggestions how to deal with the stresses of working in Med-surg and how I can deal and cope with it all?