Are there any nurses that actually LIKE nursing?

[CShel]

There are so many posts about how awful nursing is, how it's ruining lives, how people drink to cope with it, etc. I have never seen a single blog post, article, or nursing meme that says nursing is great, I love my job, etc.

It's super scary - I don't want to be miserable. Are there ANY nurses out there that don't constantly complain about it?

I seriously need some encouragement ?

[riverotter]

I'm a Nurse Administrator in the NYS prison system. I loved being a staff nurse, and became a NA to make the world a better place. After 5 years of the stress, I went back to being a staff nurse. I loved that again. I became an NA again because there was a new administration that I thought would be more supportive, but I was wrong again. I'm waiting for my step down date. I love being a staff nurse. I feel so useful and alive. Emergencies are energizing, when you know you did everything you could and saved a life, or even just improved the quality of life for someone. I feel rewarded and fulfilled every day when I am a staff nurse.

[9kidsmomRN]

Do I love nursing—yes! I believe that it’s what I was meant to do. The care has advanced, people have to be pretty sick to even get admitted. (Gone are the days where the short-staffed LTCs would ship us a few patients for CHF or COPD “exacerbation” only to be dc’d back on Monday morning when their staffing was better...) I worked a medical floor back then and really enjoyed doing all the extras to make my patients comfortable—and I had time, so why not? Most were truly grateful. Even then, though there was palpable friction between staff and administration, which became more intense when my small community hospital was bought out by a larger hospital system. I would say that over the last 30 years the divide between staff and administration has only grown, fueled in part by entities such as TJC, whose ideologies may indeed focus on patient safety but have faulty methods of implementation and evaluation. Thus to avoid penalties administrators knuckle down on staff to chart more and “care” less. This is NOT what I became a nurse for. I think, too that schools also are pressured negatively to produce test takers rather than care givers... not that good care givers shouldn’t be smart, but nursing is also caring. 
Do I still love being a nurse? Yes! I love to take good care of my patients and find time to do the little extras that make their day special. I am just sick of the administration down decisions that don’t make sense as they try to dictate what happens at the bedside when they haven’t worked at the bedside for years or even decades,  and have no clue as to the workflow of today’s hospital....whose mantra (at my hospital, anyway) is more mandatory education, more audits but no follow through on the findings. Administration has totally undermined Professional Governance and minimized nursing’s input devaluing the bedside nurse. This is what makes me feel burned out much more than patient care.

Again, I love caring for my patients (most of the time) but really want a voice in the decisions made. I am a professional. I am smart. I am caring. I am cool, calm and collected under pressure. I use intuition yet make calculated decisions. I am an advocate for my patients and coworkers. I am a nurse. 
I don’t know if others feel the same, but when I complain—this is what I continue to complain about. And it’s not that I haven’t worked hard to make a difference!

[amoLucia]

9kidsmomRN - thoughtful post. Much of your reasons guided my choices thru my career years.

I will say I don't think I ever used the word 'love' for nsg, even 'like' might have been a bit strong at times. But I never DISLIKED nsg as nsg -just all the admin BS, cliques, too much with too little, etc.

Just knowing I could make a positive influence/impact on pt care, made all the difference for me. And I could walk in and do my job as best as poss.

[cgw5364, ADN]

I worked mother/baby for 10 years and loved it. I ended up leaving because of 12 hours shifts and being on call. Still loved taking care of new parents and babies when I left. Currently I work in Denials and have done so for 11 years. I started out as a nurse auditor and our department morphed into Denials Management with some audit work. As much as I loved Mother/Baby the type of work I do now is truly my niche. I love figuring out why an insurance company denied payment to our facility and figuring out how to get the claim paid so the patient is not held responsible. The audit work I do is making sure the charges billed are supported by documentation in the medical record and going head to head with a nurse auditor from the insurance company who is trying to have charges removed from the bill. It's like I am figuring out puzzles all day! I work 8 hours a day from home and don't work weekends, call or holiday work. 

[BeenThere2012, ASN, RN]

I love my work, but not always the jobs I’ve had.  It’s sometimes just a matter of where you work and finding the specialty most Interesting to you.

I can now say, I absolutely love the work and job I have now.  Can’t imagine a better position.  Now having said that, it took experiences in other areas, gaining the knowledge I now have to be able to appreciate my current position to its fullest.  No one should give up.  There is so much variety in our profession, you are bound to find something good for you.  It does matter where you live sometimes as far as what is available to you.  Metropolitan area vs under served areas and so on.  Also, I suppose some have different expectations of what our roles are and end up unhappy no matter what.?

[dougjiro, CNA, LPN, RN]

I am working at an isolation and quarantine hotel caring for Covid positive and asymptomatic close contact patients. I started working at the last peak of cases back in December. The work environment was a little overwhelming but a great learning experience and the best part is I really felt like I was helping people which got me out of bed for each shift. I am currently following Jordan Peterson on Youtube who I highly recommend to you regarding what is meaningful in life. Peterson makes the case that work with responsibility is what is meaningful. Who wants to have rich parents who lavish you with money? Spending your days going from party to party. If you’re lucky, you wake up and realize that your life has no meaning engaging in self indulgence. We are lucky as nurses to have the opportunity to claw our way up Maslow‘s hierarchy. You are in my thoughts.

[Kathryn Defranc]

I was a nurse for 25 years and always Loved my job! Of course, as with any jobs, there are hard times and tough moments, but I would never trade them for anything else! I had to stop working due to a rare immune disease, and that was the hardest time of my life. I loved the patients, the nurses and CNAs I worked with, and the care I was able to provide. I miss it terribly, so put a smile on your face, and, if you enjoy what you do, continue to live the nursing life!

[Wishinonastar, BSN]

I love nursing. I do not love all workplaces. The actual art and science of nursing, the patients, the things I do, that I love. The workplace is what makes you love or hate work. The patients have never been my problem, though like everyone I have had a few doozies over the years. Mostly the ones that cause me stress are taking their misery out on me and I can deal with that. Sometimes I can turn them around. I like to help people. If you like nursing tasks, you just have to find a place that you like to work at. Occasionally I wish I had done something else for a living, but that is because of things like on-call and 12 hour shifts and being short of help. These are stressors that come with the job. But I love basically what I do and I never feel so alive as when I am making a difference in someone's life. That is the bottom line for me.