Am I losing it??

Hello? You are a nurse. What is the most diverse profession? That would be nursing. Pack your bags and get out of ortho. Try OB or home health or prison nursing or school nursing or teach nursing. Need I go on? Ok...management, go back to school, icu, ER, psych, women's GYN outpatient, outpatient chemo, personal nurse to the ROlling Stones (Im sure they need one.) you get the point. Don't give up esp. if you love patient care.

Or if you really want to work at Walmart- Im sure they need someone to do bloodpressure screenings for the elderly

We all do anitadifflife - it's for a '5 strikes and you're out' system I think - others see a red warning triangle against our names and they can report abusive or nasty posts - only panic if they start to light up - if it's all grey right now, it's fine!

Only time in my life when grey is good - and you don't want to add artificial colour!

I think one of the best ways to revitalize is to change the kind of nursing you are doing. Get out of the ortho surgicenter and get a nursing job doing something else. You'll find that you'll have to do a little reading to bone up on the new area you'll be working and it will be refreshing to see and learn some new things that have happened outside the ortho area.

Welcome to my world.........at least, the way it was until a couple of months ago!

I walked away from thirty bucks an hour and the best benefit package in my entire area nine days before Christmas last year. At that particular moment in time, I was a day shift float nurse (yep, that's life in Hell all right), and I was a burned-out, stressed-out, micro-managed pack mule in the guise of an RN. I spent most of the last year bouncing in and out of the hospital with chest pain, gallbladder and kidney stones, pyelonephritis, pneumonia, and even cellulitis, so I was constantly in trouble for being out sick. I used up every single hour of a month's worth of personal time off, plus a total of about five weeks of FMLA. And still I came to work half the time feeling like garbage, my systolic BP hovered around 190, I gained thirty pounds, and I ached everywhere it was possible to ache.

In spite of it all, I continued to work as hard as I possible could, only to be called into the assistant manager's office every few weeks to be lectured about my supposed lack of motivation, my failure to follow through, my lack of focus, my inattention to detail, etc. etc. ad nauseam. I don't know of much that is more disheartening than to be told you're doing a lousy job when you're working your heart out. Funny, my PATIENTS never complained about me........in fact, they loved me. So did most of my co-workers, the housekeeping and dietary staff, even the MDs.

But, as far as this particular manager was concerned, I could do nothing right; in fact, once when a narcotic went missing, I was the very first person accused (even though I'd just arrived for my shift and didn't even have keys yet). And when the nurse who'd actually taken out the drug and forgotten to sign for it admitted having done so, the expression of disappointment that crossed that manager's face is something I will never forget......it was as if she actually WANTED me to be guilty.

Well.......that was then. And this is now: I just started a job as health services coordinator in an assisted living community, which is something I've done before but left because the corporation I worked for then did not value nursing or nurses. This one does. The pay isn't anywhere near what I was making at the hospital, but the minute I walked into that building for the first time to interview with the administrator, I had the feeling that at long last, I was home.

While I don't know what the future holds, my sense is that---barring anything unforeseen---this is the job I will retire from someday. In three days I've fallen head over heels in love with the residents, the staff, and the building itself, and my early efforts to reach out to them are already paying dividends. Many of the residents have made a point of memorizing my name, and I've received more affection and acceptance in these few days than I dreamed possible so early on.

And for the first time in years, I've recaptured the feeling that this is why God wanted me to become a nurse.

So whatever you do, get out of that toxic arena and go find your bliss.......you will NEVER be sorry. It may take a little while to figure out what your bliss is, but you will be glad in the long run that you walked away from a job that has been sucking the life out of you and depriving you of the joy that can be found in the right work.

Best of luck to you.