almost off orientation and crazy nasty day!

[erin01]

so friday will be my last day on days and i have 2 more weeks left till i am on my own! I am freaking out, i have had 6weeks of medsurg and now i am on my floor which is a cardiac/tele step down. i have been there for four weeks and have always been busy with four patients. But the other night it got nuts! night staff came on and there were only 4 nurses all with only a year experience and a float as the only senior rn. The nurses were going nuts, saying it was unsafe they had 6-7pts each. some even threatened to quit . the float nurses called every higher up there was to call and was refusing to take report=( So this is the hell i am going into at night??????? so i come back the next day to have 6 patient who were all really sick and me and my preceptor ran around like chickens with out heads all day. I had one patient who passed out twice on me after getting u p from the chair and another who went for a stress test and coded!!!!!!!!!!!! Its been crazy and all i can think is how would i have gotten through this day with out help from my preceptor? and to top it all off the pt who coded who we took to icu was ok. But the nurse who took him wrote a nasty note about me and my preceptor.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am so discouraged at the crazyness and lack of support i have seen. We did our best that day and to end it with a note from a icu nurse complaining how we didnt do this or that was horrible to say the least. I took it ok saying i dont care what people say about what i do, as long as i do what i think is best for my patient! If i was ever called on it i would say i did what i thought was right and they can take it and shove it if they dont like it!!!!!!! IS that a bad attitude to have? I am always been told to cover my ass with documenting and notes, and i do my best! but call me on something and i would say the same i did my best with what i have and if its not good enough than take this rn license an this job and shove it!!!!!!!!!!!!

i am sorry if i am been nasty or rambling but just needed to get this off my chest. Any thoughts?

[cc_RN]

wOw!! i am sooo sorry that you have had to experience such a thing! that sounds scary!! if you don't mind me asking, where do you work? hospital and location?

my suggestions, however, would be to remain positive as you are and to continue doing your best. that's all you can do...especially as a new grad!

[KeechieSan]

Well, that does qualify as a really crappy night, and I'm sorry..

...but welcome to nursing! I work on a tele floor and we often have 6 patients, and usually they are pretty sick. We have codes, we have nurses from the ICU who complain about our disorganization, we have administrators who refuse to get off their butts to lend a hand! But, we also have patients who are grateful for our help and patience. You just have to decide if the crappy outweighs the good, and if it does you need to move on.

For me, the good outweighs to bad... usually :wink2:

[MedSurgeMess]

Hang in there till something better comes along. Document, document, document. It's all about CYA and best patient outcome.

[SlightlyMental_RN]

wOw!! i am sooo sorry that you have had to experience such a thing! that sounds scary!! if you don't mind me asking, where do you work? hospital and location?

Don't forget, we aren't supposed to name names on this site. :) You never know who is reading.:behindpc:

[Goingthere]

This was a great experience to have, no matter how poopie. Take it in stride, beciase atleast you know what to look for when your out in the job market.

[notsureImanurse]

Thank God! I thought it was just me. Three months in and I'm already at the point they said it would take me 6 months to get to.....wondering why I did this, and ready to quit. If I was a quitter, and thought I could get another job, I would. I just can't seem to get the time management down.....and can't figure out what I'm doing wrong. End of shift is a nightmare for me. Work tomorrow and already feeling a little nauseous. Good luck!

[OregonGal]

Sounds like you are a patient advocate. Keep it up, and do as others posted, document!

[studentgrl]

im a lil over one year as a RN at a busy 40 bed tele/cv unit. at nights we get average 6 and lot of times 7 pts a piece, sometimes we dont have nursing aides, sometimes we dont have charge nurse and im the only senior nurse on the floor some nights. they try to call other senior nurses to come in to do charge but they all refuse or have other jobs. alot of times we're just short a nurse but our nurses dont want to come back if they dont have to cuz they just had a bad and crazy night. they never look at the acuity when they do staffing cuz most of the time we have 4 complete pts a piece that require so much of our time, our bp machines are half working and o2 sat is not available on all the machines, i can go on and on but i wont. the truth is nursing stressful with high patient ratio.