I'm currently in my first year of nursing school and was recently hired in a hospital as a CNA.
I was really looking forward to this position, however the past few weeks have been one of the worst experiences of my life simply due to low morale on the unit. The drama, backstabbing and politics are downright awful. Nursing is a second career path for me, and in my 15+ years of job experience, I have never witnessed such terrible behavior occurring amongst co-workers.
The nurses and aides constantly gossip about one another, the patients - some of whom are in hospice (!) - and its really devastating to witness how this distracts the staff from their patients. The patient is not the focus at work, but rather drama on the unit, and I can't stand it. It is a known fact in the hospital that this specific unit has very low morale (something I wish I had known before accepting the position), and at a recent staff meeting it was the first point of discussion.
It has brought so much anxiety into my life that I'm seriously considering leaving, as the stress distracts me entirely from my nursing studies. However I'm worried if I leave so soon, I'll ruin my chances at ever being hired at this hospital again, and that it will be difficult to ever explain my short run of employment at this hospital to a future employer. Not to mention that the unit will probably gossip about me leaving so soon! The fact that hiring in my area of the country is slow for new grads has me feeling like an idiot about considering leaving over this, but my anxiety is through the roof.
Since I haven't been there for a year, transferring to a different unit is not an option.
I guess I'm not sure what to do! How to handle this? Has anyone been in a similar position before? Advice is needed! Seeing this type of behavior has me nearly running and screaming from this profession. I just can't believe that hospital staff can be so mean to one another!
