This might be considered a gripe, a rant, or whatever you want to call it, but I need to get it out.
I'm a brand new RN, just passed my boards last week. I've been working as a GN and now RN at a small community hospital in the ICU. There are only a few full-time nurses on day shift where I am orienting, the rest are per diem, part-time, and med-surg nurses pulled from other units in a desperate attempt to staff a unit that recently had 6 of their 12 nursing staff quit. One of the nurses is fantastic. She's friendly, loves to teach, can handle everything from tanking patients to yelling doctors. She is not my preceptor.
My preceptor I won't comment on.
The last nurse is quite simply burned out. She yells all the time. At me, at her patients, at the other nurses, you name it, she yells. I can handle her, because I won't need to work with her once orientation is over. She treats me like her personal CNA, and I spend most of my day bathing and changing her patients. (There are no aides on our unit)
But that is not my gripe/rant. We had a patient who had a drug addiction. Not uncommon, but this one was very ill for various reasons. During my free time, I tried to help out with her care as much as possible because she needed so much care. I talked to her often. I explained what was happening when we touched her. She could not respond, but could hear. All three of my co-workers told me, in the patients presence, that I shouldn't be nice to her, she did this to herself. I heard from them that she isn't worth their time, she's just going to kill herself later, etc.
I kept at it. I talked to her whenever I could, after I was done with my own patients, until yesterday. What happened yesterday you ask?
Yesterday, as I bathed her, I was screamed at from across our small unit to get the "f" out of her room and take care of the real patients. Again, I spent the day bathing and changing the other nurses' patients, while they sat in the breakroom gossiping and playing cards.
So, any advice? Should I stick this out? I think that this is just a part of critical care nursing and it will get better when I gain experience or change shifts. Did anyone else have this problem? Does it get better?
Thanks for reading my complaint. I really want to see a time when nurses don't need to blow off steam at home like this.
