One year into nursing and I'm burned out already!

[SoundofMusic]

I hate to whine, but as a nurse on a med sur/neuro floor as I head into my 2nd year, I see no end in sight to the paperwork, especially. They just keep coming up with additional forms of documentation. Nothing they initiate makes our jobs any easier. I go for sometimes 8 hrs with no breaks -- I mean, it just keeps going on and on.

I hear from folks on our unit also that even after our contract is over, our manager will find ways to not let us out of the unit. I ask how can they do this? I have enjoyed the unit, but really would like to try different areas of nursing and gain expeirence (i..e, move to tele or a step down unit of some kind). I think to avoid this burnout feeling, that I just would like a change.

How long do most people stay in their first job, assuming they've been relatively successful at it -- and how can you convince a manager that you want to go and try a different area of nursing?

I don't know -- nurses personalities also are burning me out, along with the demanding FAMILIES. I can hardly take them anymore.

I would also like to find a hospital where all the systems and the departments that supposedly support you woudl actually WORK -- I am spending SO much time coordinating and finding supplies, I can't even BE a nurse half the time.

Would also LOVE to find a place I don't have to deal with techs. There are some days lately I can't even stand the sight of them.

Sorry to be so negative, but I'm feeling the dreaded burnout already.

[marilynmom, LPN, NP]

I've worked on the unit I'm in now for a year and a half and I'm burned out too. I just decided that was enough of the stress and anxiety and I went and found a less stressful and better paying position outside of the hospital. I am SO GLAD I did that!

For me the ICU was a great learning experience, but the stress and anxiety I felt even on my days off was eating me up and making me a very unhappy and miserable person.

Get out and find something else. I wont go back to the hospital again. I'm looking into masters programs for later this year for NP and also teaching nursing classes or doing clinicals.

[yashalag]

Med/Surg is a very, very stressful place to be. You always feel overwhelmed since it never seems to be staffed the way it really should be. Where I worked you got 7-8 patients, many of them "torn up", as we like to say. I did that for 4 years and have now moved to an intermediate care ICU. I LOVE it! I get 2 patients, sometimes 3 if they don't have a lot of problems. I feel like I really get to know them and can attend to their needs. When I give report, I actually can remember their names and feel like I'm giving a very detailed, yet concise account.

The other thing I did that has made a difference is that I left a for profit hospital that cared nothing about safety and staffing, and went to a Magnet facility. The nurses are a lot more empowered here, the doctors treat us with a lot more respect (although you do deal with some of the same stuff you would anywhere else). They also value your experience and education. I'm very pro-magnet, for this reason. I feel like I've stepped into an entirely different environment.

Don't be discouraged. The good thing about nursing is that there are so many opportunities and there is nothing wrong with switching positions until you find your niche. Good luck to you.

[SoundofMusic]

I swear, it seems like people with the least amount of problems have the most amount of complaints, and the patient with the msot amount of problems have the least amount of complaints. My post is totally off topic but I just needed a therapeutic release.

Your comment is absolutely not off topic -- it is right on. THIS is what has burned ME out. Answering the call light when you are in the middle of a blood draw, or a code, and having to do this for a patient who is simply too lazy to lean over and move a tray for themselves. It's the sense of entitlement and the family's sense of entitlement that will burn you out.

I don't know what administrators can do about it. I think, personally, that it warrants a massive educational campaign TO THE PUBLIC that hospital time is NOT rest time, NOT a time to be pampered and waited on, NOT catering to you time, but a time of healing -- and that to heal you have to MOVE, have a postive attitude, be cooperative, LISTEN to your docs and the staff, and not demand something every two minutes. The public should be educated also on the role of the nurse -- to know that we are not "their girl," to fetch them something every 2 minutes, that family members should be there to HELP, especially with the demented patient who is a horrid fall risk. I really feel a cultural change is in order.

I mean -- many times our unit is like drop off babysitting for alzheimers patients whose families are just looking for a 23-48 break. It is then these same families who call every 1/2 hr DEMANDING to know what is going on with their spouse/mom/dad and want to know exactly WHEN the doc is coming in (do I look like I can control a doctor's schedule??) to talk to them. It's always, always these family members who are rude, nasty, and seem to take out their every frustration w/ life on YOU, the nurse, because we are the ones who are always there.

Or the person who came in with vague complaints of stomach pain, who complains about the food all day -- HEY -- if you are in SO MUCH PAIN that you required admission to the hospital, one would think that menu choice for he day would be the least of your problems!

I also need to vent -- because it's hard, day after day, to deal with the Entitlement Generation. I'm tired of them. I am a military spouse who had to get up and make her own bed in a military hospial after a C-section. I was NEVER checked in on, had to walk out on my own w/ no wheelchair. Militay hospitals have the right idea -- patients are RESPONSIBLE for at least SOME of their own care. It is not entirely up to some nurse or doc for YOU to get better.

I think nurses just are carrying way too much of the burden -- for docs and for families. Part of the burden needs to shift back where it belongs -- on the patients and their families.

I may rub some wrong with this post, but these are my feelings on the issue.

[Virgo_RN, BSN, RN]

I get burnt out just thinking about Med/Surg and I've never worked there, just had two clinical rotations there in nursing school.

No matter where you work, you will always bump up against patients and families that are clueless. But, I've found that in my specialty area, our patient population consists of mostly older folks, and I think that does make a difference. To make a generalization, many older folks, because they have been around the block a few times, have learned not to sweat the small stuff.

[inland18mempire]

For the first time in our Med-Surg unit we got a night time supervisor for 3 days a week from 7p-7a. She started about 2 months ago, and just this week has submitted her letter of resignation. My how they fly by so quickly! Med-Surg is hard. I'm from CA so we have a legal limit of 5, but I swear they give us 5 bad ones. One that has a G-tube, mentally challenged, and trying to climb out of bed. One that is young, is a drug user, and demands you call his doctor for for the 5th time in the night for more dilaudid for his pain or else he's going to take legal action when he gets out for abandonment/negliglect. One Post-op with pain medication around the clock and vitals signs around the clock. One who calls you every 10 minutes for absolutely nothing at all. And of course the lovely rapid response patient. I hate med-surg and this was the last place I wanted to be in when I graduated. But when I applied, the nurse recruiter said MS was all they had available, so I had to take it. (and it's close to home too and pay rate is pretty awesome). I'm planning to transfer to someplace else once I hit the 1 year mark for 2 reasons: I think it looks bad if you keep a job less than a year, and that's when I get the final installment of my sign-on bonus. In talking with other new nurses there, I heard someone of them applied later than I did and still got into places I wanted, such as ER and ICU. I think the Nurse Recruiter fibbed to me a bit and needed to staff Med-Surg, which isn't exactly most people's dream areas to be in.