Do nurses get fired often?

[queenjulie]

It seems like I see people talking on here constantly about how they were fired from their first job, or their last job, or know several people who were fired. Do nurses get fired a lot, especially for relatively minor errors? Is it a career ender? It just seems so odd to me, but I'm coming from a career in publishing where I only saw maybe five people fired in twelve years at several companies, and three of them were either stealing or using Media on their work computers. It's just really, really rare, so it seems totally bizarre to me to think that nurses get fired on a regular basis. Can you still get a job after that (assuming it was for something like a med error, not for stealing narcotics or violently abusing a patient or something like that)?

[Karou]

Oh dear. 1+ year old thread revived by a first time poster complaining of women.

[eieiyo]

It seems like I see people talking on here constantly about how they were fired from their first job, or their last job, or know several people who were fired. Do nurses get fired a lot, especially for relatively minor errors? Is it a career ender? It just seems so odd to me, but I'm coming from a career in publishing where I only saw maybe five people fired in twelve years at several companies, and three of them were either stealing or using Media on their work computers. It's just really, really rare, so it seems totally bizarre to me to think that nurses get fired on a regular basis. Can you still get a job after that (assuming it was for something like a med error, not for stealing narcotics or violently abusing a patient or something like that)?

In my 27years as a nurse I have been fired a few times. Maybe 5-6. It is not a career ender. Most of the time it was a job I hated. Stupid reasons. Last time was a couple of months ago where my boss lied about something. It often seems to me that the people that speak up get fired. I was working in LTC and the only nurse with a med aid for up to 50 patients. I ran my butt off. I cared. I made do when the docs came in with orders up the wazoo. I also trained all my co workers, who when I was fired never spoke to me again.

[mrcn23]

Yes nurses can get fired very easily. In some states the discretion is at will, therefore if you do anyhthing on the long list of errorsyou can be fired. Most places will let their good and likeable nurses get away with almost anything though. its best to know your job and be helpful all the time. this simple behavior can prevent be fired for silly things like coming a few minutes late towork. Plus the older generation of nurses are really weird about a alot of irrelevant things that dont matter to the patients.