I hate what's happening to nursing...

[nyteshade]

Eight years.

That is how long I’ve been in nursing. Just eight years. I haven’t been on AN in a while. I used to frequent the site a lot to vent with others, and help others with advice. Well, today is a ranting kind of day, so here it goes…

I hate what nursing is becoming. It is become overrun with elite folks who have forgotten what it’s like to just get through your shift. It’s being taken over by money hungry CEOs that are finding neat little ways to package “customer service” with healthcare. Our intelligence is being insulted here! What exactly do I mean by this? Well, what professional do you know gets “scripts” to regurgitate at patients? Why is it that we are not trusted to do our job or say the right thing?

I understand that healthcare is indeed a business. It has to be. If it weren’t, we’d all be working for free. I got that. I do my job. I put my all into my shift. I advocate for my patients. I’ve gone above and beyond…all without recognition.

But, I’m deeply saddened…Now I’m being told that isn’t good enough. All I see for the future of healthcare is walking into a patient’s room at the end of my shift saying, “My name is______, if you felt I gave excellent care call 888-tell-them, and rate me a 10.” Heaven forbid you score less than 10 three times…

Eight years ago, I felt so proud in my whites on graduation day. I felt professional, neat, knowledgeable, and respected. Now, I feel burned up, and abused. For now, I stay in nursing…patients still smile, and thank me at the end of my shift. They cannot detect how I feel under the surface.

But, I am seriously considering leaving healthcare altogether.

[dnnc52]

OK I feel a need to comment on another non-nursing duty that was enforced at the CMH when I was working a busy med/chemo unit. On our down time we were told to call patients who were discharged for follow up. Now this gets a bit ironic, while we had to try and pull the word Excellent from them when we spoke to them on the phone R/T the level of care they had while in our unit. Great,Best Wonderful did not count it had to be Excellent",otherwise we would not meet our quota?. Now, whenever you really spoke to folks who were in the hospitals the main complaint I really heard was"the nurses hardly ever talked to you or spent time" So while we were on the phone working on a PR recovery,we really should have been off the phones and in the rooms talking and spending one to one face time. Instead of trying to play catch-up on the telephone later after the patient was discharged.... Wow!

[PMFB-RN, RN]

Scripting has been introduced at my place of employment. We implemented hourly rounding awhile ago but it's all scripted. Saying things like "I have the time" (but really I don't...), "it would be my pleasure to do so" "it is our goal to give you the best experience possible...." um, that H stands for Hospital, not Hilton!!! I'm sick of all HCHAPS and all of this customer service crap and I really haven't been a nurse for that long. I think it belittles our profession and also doesn't allow me to use my professional nursing judgement. "Oh, pt in room 1 is somnolent? well if there pain medicine is due, you give it to them!" (true story). Forget about patient safety because all of the higher ups care about now is "customer" satisfaction.

*** The only defence aginst such crazy mandaes from on high is for nurses to simply refuse to do it. It works. When he hospital I worked at (Magnet of course) tried it they were me with mass mutiny from he nurses. All it took was a couple of senior and respected nurses to refuse to inspire the rest to also refuse. Of course it won't work if you are the only one refusing. Another effective stragy is to ask the patients to mention how annoying the scripting is in their satisfaction surveys.