I've been at my TCU job a year now. I used to love it. I loved going to work, I loved the patient population I worked with and I loved the people I worked with.
Over the past couple of months things have changed. A new supervisor was hired that I butt heads with. I'm very head strong and independent, she's the same. I'll get a new admit or have something come up during the night and make a nursing order for a treatment and she'll outright disagree with me and change the treatment without even assessing the patient. A few times I've said something about a treatment and she'll tell me I'm wrong when I can actually provide clinical resources that she's the wrong one. When I give her report and state a patient refused a treatment she'll yell at me telling me the patient can't refused. At one point I told her "the patient has been a RN longer than I've been alive. She knows the risks of refusing."
A while back I was told I was going to be trained in as an on-call supervisor which never happened. She told me, "I don't think you'd be very good at this job." My list could go on and on for the things like this that have occurred. I've smiled and bared it. I've gone to her and respectively talked to her about the clashing and have tried to come to a common ground.... nothing has helped.
She has been going to my DON telling them everything she thinks I am doing wrong. I've had other nurses tell me I'm great and they love working after me, or thank me for helping them. I've had the supervisor who works opposite of this woman tell me she's happy when I'm working because I'm a good nurse.
So I got a call from my DON the other day with a formal verbal warning about all the things I've been doing wrong, such as not getting all my work done and passing stuff off to the next shift. These are problems everyone has been experiencing. Most of the time I spend a large portion of my shift cleaning up from the previous shift.
Here's where my dilemma comes in. Over the past couple of months the stress from this job has been making me sicker and sicker. I have chronic headaches that have been grossly exacerbated, which now have turned into almost constant severe headaches. My depression has gotten out of control despite the Prozac that normally keeps it under control. Some days I find myself borderline suicidal. I am miserable and can barely function outside of work. I've been applying to jobs left and right, but the job market is really tight right now and I haven't had a lot of luck.
My boyfriend keeps telling me that I can quit and we'll make do on his $9.50/hr salary and by using credit cards. I haven't taken him up on this because it is ridiculous to put ourselves into that much debt. I'm currently in an RN-BSN program, and I got my extra loans in the mail yesterday... I took out a heck of a lot more loans than I thought I did and got nearly 2 months worth of pay. My plan was to throw this money back at my student loans... but then I got to thinking. I could use this money to quit my job. I would risk not finding another job within two months, but I would be a lot healthier. Is this a smart move? What else can I do to try and improve my situation?
