To those who want to leave nursing

Nurses Professionalism

Published

It seems like every time I come onto AN these days, every other post is "I'm sick of nursing/I want out". I understand the nature of this site and forum and all are welcome to come on and vent, but this post type really irks me. Instead of responding to every post, I wanted to make a blanket reply to all posts.

Ok, you are sick of nursing. For reason A, B, or C , you had a revelation that this is not the profession for you. Lets start with that revelation.

First of all, give it more than a few days before posting about how its time to throw in the towel. Everyone has bad shifts/days/weeks, that is life. After giving yourself some time to cool down, you may realize you are overreacting. Also, can you think of a job prior to nursing that you weren't eventually sick of? Isn't that a part of the reason why you went back to school to become a Nurse? Any job you have had/have/will have will always have negative aspects along with positive aspects. Every job I have ever had its share of poor management, gossip, redundant/ludicrous policies, ungrateful/manipulative customers, and a poor ratio of work put in to compensation. You can try to improve your work environment best you can, you can cope with it, or you can just flat out leave and find work elsewhere. I really can't help you there, that is a decision for you to make.

Doctors are disrespectful and talk down to you? Welcome to nursing. For every difficult doctor (in my opinion, seems to be a 4:1 ratio) you will find one that is respectful and understanding. Some people are easier to work with than others, same goes with co-workers that are RN/LPN/CNA. Again, if you don't like it than fix it - have you tried telling them flat out when they are being disrespectful? You would be surprised how well this works.

Difficult patients? Welcome to nursing. Believe it or not, but people do not like to go to the hospital. They may be difficult for you, but you are as equally difficult for them. When it is medically necessary to be in a hospital, it is not a good experience. When people are in pain it affects their mood. When people are sick, they will get cranky and may say or do things that they wouldn't otherwise. Try to keep that in mind.

Unsafe work environment? I have been on both sides, and I can say now that I am in one of the safest working environments I have EVER been in. If the patient:nurse ratio is too high, look at the patient acuity before crying unsafe. If I am on the floor and taking care of a high ratio (7-8:1), the person that created the assignment probably factored in that these patients are stable and/or easy to care for. If I have a 3:1 ratio, it is probably because these patients are much higher acuity. Take a look at what you perceive as unsafe and what unsafe truly means. When I worked agency, I would be put into low-staffed nursing homes where I was responsible for 45-60 people on a shift - sometimes it was manageable, other times it was VERY unsafe. When I truly feel that patient care is compromised, I speak up. I have refused assignments before, which is a good way to get management to take your concerns seriously. I didn't last there very long due to the frequency of unsafe assignments. When I realized it was unsafe, I found a different job. If you feel safety is compromised, don't keep returning to the same work environment. I don't remember where I heard this, but there is a saying: Insanity is performing the same action(s) and expecting different results.

Ok, whatever has lead you to the decision, you are tired of nursing.

Find a different job. Maybe its not nursing that bugs you, but rather the circumstances of where you work. Nursing as a whole is an increasingly dynamic career path. Not feeling challenged in the nursing home? Work your way up to ICU. Want more autonomy and less care plans? Try Air Care. Too stressed? Take up office nursing or teaching. Don't want to touch people anymore? Go back to school and get into nursing research. It is going to take some time to find what fits you best, and its going to take longer to achieve that position. That's life, you work hard for the job you want.

Take a hiatus. Just because you have the licence doesn't mean you have to use it! I knew a guy that got fed up with nursing and moved on to bartending. He was a bartender for six months and came back to nursing refreshed. Nursing is a very difficult profession, and its okay if you need a break from time to time.

Go back to school. If money is not enough or work is leaving you in a rut, advance yourself. Can't afford to? Baloney! If you sit down I am sure you can figure it out. I am up to my neck in debt, but I still feel that going to school for nursing was the best decision I have made in my life.

For every post that reads "Sick of Nursing" there are at least 10 posts that are "Would do anything - Can't find a job in nursing!" . **** or get off the pot! People would die for your job right now, especially in this economy. You are not doing anybody any good when you hate nursing, yet you sit on your job. It reflects on your patient care, it is taken out on your co-workers, and it keeps good, hard-working, passionate people out of the profession. If you are miserable then leave! If you feel you can fix your attitude, than at least try to fix it. Don't sit around and mope; you are a professional, start acting like one.

If this post comes across as insensitive, than grow up. You are an adult. You made the decision to go to school, you made the choice to work at your job. You have the power to change your job. You have the power to leave at any time.

Thanks for listening to my rant.

I encountered this post during a Google session. After reading your “rant”, I was compelled to participate in your post. Nursing turnover is more than natural attrition and deserves respect and compassion. Those new to the profession along with the experienced are valuable to the establishment and securing them in positions that serve the patient is vital to the health care system. High turnover rates are relevant matters that affect everyone and compromise the care given to patients along with increased health care cost. Many studies have addressed this topic and defined employment factors that lead to high turnover rates. If you read this study http://www.uexcel.com/resources/articles/NursingTurnover.pdf, it will list areas for improving nursing retention. When I read the study, it appeared to me that strong leadership was needed to correct these situations. I recently completed a book by DePree that addressed similar issues listed in the study on nursing turnover. Many of the major complaints such as; lack of trust with coworkers, lack or role clarity, poor communication on critical issues with management and lack feeling respect for contributions can be solved through good leadership. Great leaders are more than our managersor supervisors. They are also our coworkers. It is important to remember nursing is the profession that employees the most people in the health caresystem. If we all recognize that, we can be supportive to our fellow nurses and find solutions together.

Specializes in Med/Surg, Rehab.

I love this post. I have wanted to post many times about quitting nursing. I gave it a few weeks and I'm starting to like it again. I don't think it will ever be something I can call my "passion" or my "calling" but it's a job that I'm good at and I enjoy it. I'd like to bookmark this post for when I'm having a bad day :)

Specializes in Critical Care.

I find the new nurses can be very annoying with their super achiever I'm better than you, I'm smarter than you and I'm going to show the world how great I am, even though I know next to nothing but look at me with my positive upbeat attitude, drowning in student loan debt!

You complain that their are too many negative posts and its sad but true, but this underlies a systemic problem with bedside nursing brought about by crappy working conditions in general. Finding a great place to work is a needle in the haystack. If you don't agree, then the very fact of all the many negative posts ought to tell you that there is a systemic problem with working conditions in hospitals and nursing homes. The grass is not always greener elsewhere, usually its not that is the problem, many people have changed jobs and are still miserable. Since most of us have to work to pay the bills the best we can do is try to work for a unionized hospital where the staff has more say about patient ratios and working conditions.

You are lucky if you have a great place to work and are happy as a nurse. Consider yourself one of the lucky ones!

As to all the unemployed new grads begging for a job, I wonder if they will still feel that way after they actually get a job in a hospital and find out how insane the working conditions are in the majority of hospitals! All I can say is be careful what you ask for. I do encourage students to consider other fields and I'm honest about all the problems in nursing. I feel sorry for the new grads with $100,000 in student loans and then they finally get a job, hate it, but can't quit because they are drowning in student loans and if they want to escape bedside nursing, they can take out even more student loans to try to get an NP job. For all the new grads unable to find a staff job, I imagine it is even harder to get an NP job! Now you have a mortgage without a house of student loans to pay off and will be paying them till you die! The last thing I plan to do is go back to school and take out student loans and to the older workers think about your need to have retirement savings before you rush out and sign up for student loans. We are always told go to college to get a job, its good debt, but as the unemployed grads find out, it is not enough and there is no guarantee of a job, but the student loan debt still has to be paid off!

Man.. I want to leave nursing. (teasing.. at least today) Seriously though. We ALL have our bad days. We come here to vent and to seek compassion and understanding from each other. I don't know any nurses who haven't woken up one day and said man I don't want to do this anymore. I don't blame them or say I don't want to read their post. I understand. I am glad this is a place where we can come and rant and rave, it helps me through my bad days.

You actually think you get credit for working HARD? Many nurses working today worked hard to get where they are and they are still working hard if they need to come to this site to vent. You know what would make your post better, if you actually apologized for not being able to put yourself in someone else's shoes.

Specializes in hospice.

Dude, this post is two years old.

Specializes in ER, Med/Surg.

Holy necrothread!

Specializes in Pediatrics, Emergency, Trauma.
Holy necrothread!

:yes:

Wonder if the OP is still around... :whistling:

If people want to leave nursing, then they should do what they want to do and leave.

Besides, it can only help the job security of those of us who have been in this career for decades, and aren't going anywhere.

Specializes in EMS, ED, Trauma, CEN, CPEN, TCRN.
Holy necrothread!

Zombies. Lol

Some of my friends went into nursing right out of high school, did nursing and finished, and are now depressed because they think they were meant for something else. When you tell your parents you want to be in the medical field, they PUSH. And it's easy to feel good about the career choice when everything is pushing you in and applauding the whole way. Then the real world sinks in, kids develop their own minds, and they wonder if they went in for the right reasons.

Don't minimize people's concerns and frustrations. I'm glad nursing is working out well for you, but that doesn't mean that you have the magic formula for how it will work for everyone.

Being a nurse for 33 years has given me a lot to consider when I am looking for another challenge or feel it is time to move on. Nursing is a very dynamic field, it changes and so we must change along with it. The whole healthcare environment is undergoing a major paradigm right now and it is exciting to be a part of this. Nursing usually comes out on top during times of major changes, as I am sure there will be new areas of nursing that will come to the front. Prevention and maintenance of chronic health conditions will be addressed more than ever before, and isn't that good for the public as a whole?? Nursing is hard work, physically, emotionally, mentally, it touches all areas of the human spirit. How many other occupations do this? It isn't always about the money, its about how productive you can be, how much your care and understanding will impact someone, how much can you contribute to the field. Are you looking at the whole environment or just your little part of it. Is the facility providing you with a means to advance or transition into another area of nursing? Flexibility is a key element of nursing, and sometimes facilities are so busy trying to keep pace with the current trends in the medical world, they over-look their staff. Hospitals especially now have a harder row to hoe due to cut backs in reimbursement, they have to watch the bottom line more now than ever before. They may actually have to turn patients away because they do not meet admission requirements. Have you noticed how many hospitals have opened up Observation Units to hold patients to decide if they should be admitted or not? This actually saves them from being fined or lose funds, reimbursement for an unjustified admission. Come on, yes, we all need money to live, we all need to work, but we also need to help make our place of employment a better place. If you feel your suggestions for improvement are falling on deaf ears, then take it up a higher level of management. There were times when I skipped the DON and went to the Asst. CEO because I wanted that person to know I was being ignored and I had a lot of good ideas that I felt could help the facility. I asked the Asst. CEO to look at my ideas and to get back to me which she did and we adopted some of the plans I had wanted for my unit. Now the DON was not happy with me, but oh well, I gave her the chance and she chose to ignore me. If it is an HR issue then take it up with HR. If you feel and have evidence that things are not going to improve, then you may need to decide if it is time to move on. Facilities do not like to lose good workers, and it costs them more money when they do. Just don't burn your bridges (meaning you may have to return to that facility at some time, so leave gracefully and with adequate notice). I do truly believe nursing is one of the most abused professions. We get verbal abuse from the MDs, from the family members, from the pts, from co-workers. It seems like everyone should be able to work together for the benefits of the patients but, we know in the real working world working with live people, it is difficult to not run across someone who is talking about you to others, trying to sabatoge you by not doing their part of their job(aides/secretaries), or drag you down with them. Hey it is the way it is, but it is up to us to change it. Lateral/horizontal Violence in the work place is an interesting topic and I encourage all of you to do a search on it. I find it is prominent in the nursing field. I hope I do not offend anyone, but often I feel it is because our field is mostly women, that this is present. My husband works in the aero-space field and mostly with men, so I ask him how it is working with mostly men. Women attach feelings to what is going on, they back stab their co-workers and they develop some type of pecking order in the work place. Men do not attach feelings to what is being said to them, they usually are more open with their co-workers and get things out, not hold them in. I find women are more aggressive than men in the work place. Any thoughts?? And yes, there was a time when I thought about leaving nursing. I had considered going into Physical Therapy. I would have to re-taken so many of my science courses that it was not worth it to me. Even though nursing leaves me totally exhausted, it is still the most stimulating, rewarding field that I could have chosen.

+ Add a Comment