I'm about ready to kiss nursing goodbye for good. No one today seems to appreciate a strong assertive nurse like myself. I won't be a wimpy nurse! I won't take crap! I refuse to be abused and walked on! I won't stop fighting for my rights as a human being at work! I am NOT a robot! I am flesh and blood! I bleed and hurt and cry and misunderstand and get angry and upset just like every other human being. Perfect I am NOT!!! Never have been...never will be!
Should I quit nursing and go work for Wal-Marts? Perhaps I can get a job at Barnes and Nobles. I love being surrounded by books and the smell of books, so maybe I should do that?
HELP!!! I'm tired of crying on my days off about the ill-treatment I undergo on my job. They don't want a good nurse. What they want is a warm body who is "task and servant oriented" who doesn't talk or speak for herself/himself. They want a person without a bladder, without a need to deficate while on duty, without a need for nourishment while on duty. They want doormats and handmaidens. Nurses are not needed anymore in today's realm of nursing from what I see as a nurse now.
Five patients.......one me...........they all want NOW....I can only attend to one at a time.....it takes time to care for one patient.......perhaps longer than the other family members or patients want to wait for.......why not give us nurses a room with five beds in it where we can treat all five within sight of the others and their loved ones so they can see what goes on in nursing. They can't see through walls that Mr. so and so needs this or that, or that I am trying to save a life, or that I'm feeding the old man who can't use either of his hands because the PCTs are overworked and there's no one else to feed him, and........
There's not enough room to voice the drama we live with in nursing today, yet we get written up, gossiped about, talked down to like toddlers or like dogs who've just peed the new carpet.
I've been working through the same dilemma, Cheerfuldoer. I've been a nurse for 10 years, a nurse aide for 10 years before that. 2 positions ago, I had been wooed back to a facility by a wonderful DON and administrator, who were open and honest and willing to do what was needed to make the place great. A year and a half later, the ADON managed to destroy every other management person, including the DON and Adm, in about a 2-month period (EVERYBODY was gone!) with the help of a new corporate consultant, and took the DON position. The new Adm had a horrible reputation in the industry grapevine. I had just done a change to night-shift supervisor, and her first action was to force the outgoing DON to write me up for something incredibly stupid, then literally escorted her out the door! I decided discretion was the better part of valor, and kept my head down. The problem was, she was not only a rotten nurse and human being, she was NOT discreet about her ... affection... for another department head. I asked why HE was coming in early (she was coming in early for a few weeks), and the day shift said they had been an item for some time. That person proceeded to regale me with stories of previous relationships. I kept hearing these stories from the day shift, and seeing enough with my own eyes. All this time, she's picking apart my shift staff, I'm having to defend them and try to clear up the issues, and the aides are ticked over having someone actually supervising them (that WAS the reason I was changed to nights by the good DON, since the night shift was not doing well). All of a sudden, I get yanked into the Adm office and warned to stop talking about the DON. Excuse me, how can I start rumors about something that happened before I was there and/or on a shift I never worked?? I knew I should have left then. But I was in the middle of an adoption process, and didn't want to change jobs and maybe jeopardize my application.
Things kept getting worse, and I did my fair share of crying. Then I get yanked in again and suspended for "not giving PRN pain meds when requested." Ridiculous! The Adm based this on what the nurse covering my days off was giving, and the nurse aides (who wanted me gone) told her I ignored them when they came to me. One thing I've learned out of that, anyone can say anything they want. I could say someone yelled at me when all they say is Hello. So ultimately I was terminated. Devastation doesn't even begin to describe what I felt.
The truly disgusting thing about this is, that other nurse who gave all the pain meds at night was also fired... and arrested. Need I say why?? Then the DON fired the last night nurse and stocked the shift with new nurses who had been nurse aides there (first class brown-nosers who treated the floor staff like crap when they were aides, and I hope the nurse aides at night are enjoying the abuse!).
Jeez I'm going on, aren't I? Sorry.
I guess the upshot of this diatribe is, I also decided to get out of nursing. For the last two years, I was working at another facility, and could see problems starting (or worsening). Too many days crying, too many times calling the DON in tears and giving my resignation, only to have her talk me out of it. Too much blood lost from the wounds in my back. Far too many sleepless nights.
So I quit, before the inevitable. I took a few weeks I couldn't afford, and thought about what I wanted. I didn't want to go back into management. I didn't want to go back on the floor. Doesn't leave me with many options.
I am pursuing an LNC career, and that is the only thing that makes me keep my license, since that is a requirement. It has actually given me back some of the enthusiasm for nursing, nursing as it was meant to be.
I'm also looking into underwriting assessment. I just don't know what I want to be when I grow up! :-)
Anyway, good luck to you in finding a better unit. And remember, don't ever let them keep you down or shut you up. Your patients deserve better.
Things are not handled the way they used to be in nursing. Management is a wild animal all to itself...Sad but true..In the past they used to actually ask you what went on and weigh both sides vs just charging in and making the customer correct all the time....I miss the old days.....
Exactomondo. Management is too busy looking out for their own butts and a-kissing, to be bothered with "such matters"
Cheerful, run do not walk to a vacation and then another job. This sounds like my story, I went from being a caring, knowledgable, efficient nurse to a rude, ill=tempered witch in 11 months according to a NM who was always ready to add the most difficult of patients, or ask me to show a new person how we do things, or etc. Good luck and get out soon.
RN2Be inc, you ran into one of the psycho nurse managers that are out there...I had a run in with one of them too and still have the scars... Glad to hear you have licked your wounds and are moving onj...it takes awhile to get over something like that, doesn't it? Some people can be so subversive, so vindictive....GRRR!!
The good thing...I (and you also now) now have a radar for people like this....and if I sense these qualities in a manager I am SOOOO outta there! LOL!
Nurses are leaving the profession for all the reasons we've discussed above. It is amazing to me why so many of us stick it out...somedays I really wonder why.
Once my baby boy is through with college I may hang up my sthethescope for good too.......it is scary out there and that Walmart greeter position looks better and better.....hehe!
Don't you think most of us stick it out because of the money? I would like to be a greeter at Wal-mart too, and am seriously thinking of trying to get a cashier position in a grocery chain. The only thing it is hard to think of working for minimum wage when I can make 4 times that as an RN. As an RN if you don't need benefits you can take a position where you make the most amount of money in the least amount of time, what other job offers that flexibility? The grocery chain does have good benefits though, and just think no stress, no responsibility, no liability, just "Hi, how are you today, paper or plastic?" Sounds better and better all the time.
Sure we all have money on our minds, we have obligations. I think we do a lot for the money we do earn. I know I have a few more years to work, I want to make good money so my SS will be a decent rate, what is wrong with that? I have tried to give good nursing care, be a good employee, be a wife, mother, daughter, sister and friend during the last years. Now I can honestly say, the wife, the mother, the sister, and the friend part are doing fine. The nursing part of me is tired of busting butt and doing the job, then being put down by the NM or CN for a comment from an already irritated, unreasonable patient. I am looking for a job and will get one soon. I just know that I am not going to stay at any one job longer than a year or two before moving on, by that time the politics are so thick a body has to move to be able to breathe. Hope this makes sense to those who are in the trenches everyday.
.it is scary out there and that walmart greeter position looks better and better.....hehe! [/b]
i know, i was just talking to my little sister today; she put in her two weeks (cena) and is going to walmart! she's also studying medical massage therapy, and said there are several nurses in her class :chuckle . but let's poll those greeters and find out how much abuse they take... ain't going' out of the frying pan into the fire. for less money.
tptb (or is that phbs)can scratch their heads and form committees to try to figure out why there's a nursing shortage. they can sink money into colleges and put up their posters. they can do whatever superficial thing they want. they don't have a clue. they should just log onto boards like this, what do you think?
Cheerful!!!! Please don't throw in the towel. You have been one of my inspirations. Take a vacation, go back to school, something but don't quit nursing. I need some help to get this nurse owned and operated company off of the ground. I am waiting on you!!!
Now I can honestly say, the wife, the mother, the sister, and the friend part are doing fine. The nursing part of me is tired of busting butt and doing the job, then being put down by the NM or CN for a comment from an already irritated, unreasonable patient. I am looking for a job and will get one soon. I just know that I am not going to stay at any one job longer than a year or two before moving on, by that time the politics are so thick a body has to move to be able to breathe. Hope this makes sense to those who are in the trenches everyday.
Sure does, sista! I feel your pain...and I was nodding my head reading your comment about the politics...thick as molasses in my hospital....
rn 2b lnc
17 Posts
I've been working through the same dilemma, Cheerfuldoer. I've been a nurse for 10 years, a nurse aide for 10 years before that. 2 positions ago, I had been wooed back to a facility by a wonderful DON and administrator, who were open and honest and willing to do what was needed to make the place great. A year and a half later, the ADON managed to destroy every other management person, including the DON and Adm, in about a 2-month period (EVERYBODY was gone!) with the help of a new corporate consultant, and took the DON position. The new Adm had a horrible reputation in the industry grapevine. I had just done a change to night-shift supervisor, and her first action was to force the outgoing DON to write me up for something incredibly stupid, then literally escorted her out the door! I decided discretion was the better part of valor, and kept my head down. The problem was, she was not only a rotten nurse and human being, she was NOT discreet about her ... affection... for another department head. I asked why HE was coming in early (she was coming in early for a few weeks), and the day shift said they had been an item for some time. That person proceeded to regale me with stories of previous relationships. I kept hearing these stories from the day shift, and seeing enough with my own eyes. All this time, she's picking apart my shift staff, I'm having to defend them and try to clear up the issues, and the aides are ticked over having someone actually supervising them (that WAS the reason I was changed to nights by the good DON, since the night shift was not doing well). All of a sudden, I get yanked into the Adm office and warned to stop talking about the DON. Excuse me, how can I start rumors about something that happened before I was there and/or on a shift I never worked?? I knew I should have left then. But I was in the middle of an adoption process, and didn't want to change jobs and maybe jeopardize my application.
Things kept getting worse, and I did my fair share of crying. Then I get yanked in again and suspended for "not giving PRN pain meds when requested." Ridiculous! The Adm based this on what the nurse covering my days off was giving, and the nurse aides (who wanted me gone) told her I ignored them when they came to me. One thing I've learned out of that, anyone can say anything they want. I could say someone yelled at me when all they say is Hello. So ultimately I was terminated. Devastation doesn't even begin to describe what I felt.
The truly disgusting thing about this is, that other nurse who gave all the pain meds at night was also fired... and arrested. Need I say why?? Then the DON fired the last night nurse and stocked the shift with new nurses who had been nurse aides there (first class brown-nosers who treated the floor staff like crap when they were aides, and I hope the nurse aides at night are enjoying the abuse!).
Jeez I'm going on, aren't I? Sorry.
I guess the upshot of this diatribe is, I also decided to get out of nursing. For the last two years, I was working at another facility, and could see problems starting (or worsening). Too many days crying, too many times calling the DON in tears and giving my resignation, only to have her talk me out of it. Too much blood lost from the wounds in my back. Far too many sleepless nights.
So I quit, before the inevitable. I took a few weeks I couldn't afford, and thought about what I wanted. I didn't want to go back into management. I didn't want to go back on the floor. Doesn't leave me with many options.
I am pursuing an LNC career, and that is the only thing that makes me keep my license, since that is a requirement. It has actually given me back some of the enthusiasm for nursing, nursing as it was meant to be.
I'm also looking into underwriting assessment. I just don't know what I want to be when I grow up! :-)
Anyway, good luck to you in finding a better unit. And remember, don't ever let them keep you down or shut you up. Your patients deserve better.