Broken RN

[Herky980]

First off, I would like to say I spent 6 years as a CNA and I completely understand the low pay and hard work. however I never new that making someone do the bare minimum would cost me my job and self esteem. I have wanted to be a nurse since I was a child. I love working in a SNF, however the one I work in completely lacks a backbone and discipline. MY CNA's take breaks whenever they want and how long they want. they do their work when they want. Some of them have been investigated but NOTHING ever happens. our DON and administrator say we need a paper trail, but then tell us to pick our battles and basically call me a nag. (my complaints are valid, such as not changing a resident for an entire shift) needless to say last week two nurses got corned by aides in our parking lot and were threatened for turning the aides in to the DON for abuse of a resident. Now, no other nurse will back me up. we literally had two aides this week get into an altercation over what hall they were assigned. when I broke them up and contacted my boss, the other nurses refused to comment and the aides denied it happened. I got pulled into my bosses offices for complaining too much. My boss basically told me I need to deal with it and wrote me up. In doing this my self esteem and feeling of power has diminished. after that I completely avoid my CNA's. This is no way to work. I am looking for other work but I am so obsessed with how to change myself so this won't happen that I am going crazy. EVERY nurse I have talked to says this is how it is everywhere and I need to deal with it.......I can't.

[hope3456, ASN, RN]

I tried going the "chain of command" in LTC (about the misconduct of the DON) and long story short, it seems that behavior is fairly normalized in the Industry. The regional manager made the DON look like a princess.

[sharpeimom]

As GrnTea said, you are not broken! Having said that, Get the heck out. NOW!