Former Nurse's Aide, hard of hearing

[ringside]

Growing up, I also wanted to be a nurse. When I was 18 I became a nurse's aide and started the prerequisites for nursing. The nursing home I worked for was so terrible I quit after three months. The nurses there were really bitter. They all told me nursing was terrible and to go into something else. The other aide's wouldn't clean up after their residents, they would just stuff towels in between their legs and change the towels. One aide left a bottle of windex on a resident's table (with food still on it!) because it was time for her break. The nurses knew all of that but they didn't care since they were all trying to get into other facilities. When anyone was on their break and a call light of their's was on they would not answer it.

I wouldn't want to go into nursing a feel like I really couldn't make a difference in a person's life because the nurse who worked the shift before me was bitter or didn't really care. I also think about disease transmission through urine, blood, feces, etc.

I am hard of hearing. I wear a hearing aid. One of the problems in my aide position was that if a patient's Tabs unit went off I had no idea which direction it was coming from. I had to run from room to room. I don't know how good I would be in an emergency.

I am now 26 years old and feel like nursing is the best job for me.

Is there a field of nursing that's right for me? Or should I stick with medical assisting or something else?

[slu_rn]

I work in a pediatric hospital and on our floors we use pagers in addition to the overhead monitors. Whenever one of your alarms goes off, the pager in your pocket vibrates and tells you the room number, and the reason for the alarm. (De-sats, bradycardia, etc) I work in our NICU and we don't use the pagers because our kids are 6 to a room. (This may change next summer when we the new facility opens and all the kiddos are in private rooms, so we'll see). Maybe talk to the various facilities in your area that you are interested in and see if they have a pager type system in place?