Does anyone regret leaving acute care?

Nurses General Nursing

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At the stroke of midnight tonight, after almost 25 years at it, I am officially resigned and done with acute care. I am in another phase of nursing now, one that isn't hospital based. I feel very free, free at last!!! But I wonder if I will be missing the excitement, the fast pace, the gossip:coollook: and most of all the patients. Anyone here leave hospital nursing and regret it?

I left 3 years ago - working hospice ever since and it keeps me involved with the patient care I love.

I miss the ER sometimes. Not L&D. Not being in charge and having no OB coverage. :uhoh3:

I don't regret it.

Good luck!:)

steph

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Specializes in LDRP.

Well, guess I will be te only one to say that i did miss working in a hospital. I worked in a hospital for 4.5 years. Cardiology, then labor & delivery. I got tired of the politics and such, so I left for Monday-Friday case management job. There was relief at first. The weekends were mine, no holidays, no one dying, etc etc. Much more relaxed work day.

After about 8 months, though, I wanted to go back. I missed it. Of course, I missed labor and delivery and wanted to do that. So maybe it is that I missed the care area I had left and was willing to go back to the hospital to get it. I have been back for about 3 weeks now ( though in a different hospital than the one I left) and love it.

So yea, I left acute care and regretted it later. Hope you are happy with your decision!!

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Specializes in OB/GYN, Peds, School Nurse, DD.
At the stroke of midnight tonight, after almost 25 years at it, I am officially resigned and done with acute care. I am in another phase of nursing now, one that isn't hospital based. I feel very free, free at last!!! But I wonder if I will be missing the excitement, the fast pace, the gossip:coollook: and most of all the patients. Anyone here leave hospital nursing and regret it?

Not for one single moment. I have been working as a school nurse for almost 4 years and it's a perfect fit for my stage in life. I worked about 25 years of night shift. It ruined my health. At this point I am doing what i love, I'm appreciated for what i do, I get weekends, holidays and summers off, I go in at 8:00, get off at 2:30, and I ALWAYS get my 30min lunch. The only downside is the poor pay, but the positives far outweigh the negatives. I would rather adjust my lifestyle than go back to acute care.

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Not for one single moment. I have been working as a school nurse for almost 4 years and it's a perfect fit for my stage in life. I worked about 25 years of night shift. It ruined my health. At this point I am doing what i love, I'm appreciated for what i do, I get weekends, holidays and summers off, I go in at 8:00, get off at 2:30, and I ALWAYS get my 30min lunch. The only downside is the poor pay, but the positives far outweigh the negatives. I would rather adjust my lifestyle than go back to acute care.

I just started as a school nurse too. 24 hours a week. And I do hospice as well.

steph

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I am literally counting the days until I can find something other than acute care.

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I was in acute care from 1999 to November of this year. I am not going back but haven't decided what I will do. Right now I am looking at hone health and hospice. Just wondering what else I could look into. I have experience in Med-Surg, ER, ICU, NICU, Pre-Op and PACU. I want to enjoy nursing again. In acute care, the dynamics have changed and now it's a constant political chaotic fight four sanity. Nursing grids have made it impossible to give good patient care. The hospital I just left changed the charting from shift assessment and intervention charting to assessment charting and mandatory 2 hour charting so that half the shift was spent running down the halls and the other half the shift fighting to chart. Most times we never got a 30 minute lunch. Lunches were wolfed down in 5 minutes after they had set for 2 hours. I doubt I will ever go back to acute care nursing.

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Wow! I guess I shouldn't want what everyone doesn't miss! I have been OUT of Acute Care for 18 years-raised my kids then got divorced and had to take an RN Recertification Course to get my license back. Took a job doing telephone triage the last 3 years but have such a desire to get back INTO Acute Care. I am so sick of sitting on my butt talking and typing all day long! I THINK I miss Acute Care, but do you think I have simply forgotten what it really was like??? Was it less ACUTE 20 years ago? I know patients were not as sick as they are now and we even had patients who were admitted for 'tests' back then. I have interviewed with Nursing Recruters and they sort of laugh at me-being 53 and WANTING to go back into Acute Care?! Can anyone remind me what I shouldn't be missing???? Deb

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Specializes in Critical care, trauma, cardiac, neuro.

Nope!

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Specializes in PACU, Surgery, Acute Medicine.
Wow! I guess I shouldn't want what everyone doesn't miss! I have been OUT of Acute Care for 18 years-raised my kids then got divorced and had to take an RN Recertification Course to get my license back. Took a job doing telephone triage the last 3 years but have such a desire to get back INTO Acute Care. I am so sick of sitting on my butt talking and typing all day long! I THINK I miss Acute Care, but do you think I have simply forgotten what it really was like??? Was it less ACUTE 20 years ago? I know patients were not as sick as they are now and we even had patients who were admitted for 'tests' back then. I have interviewed with Nursing Recruters and they sort of laugh at me-being 53 and WANTING to go back into Acute Care?! Can anyone remind me what I shouldn't be missing???? Deb

Nursing has changed tremendously in the last 20 years. The medications are newer and more complex, and patients are sicker than ever before because they are living longer with more diseases, thanks to medical advances. I left acute care 6 months ago but still pick up shifts occasionally. It's not unusual for me to have 4 out of 5 or 5 out of 5 patients unable to get up out of bed on their own, with at least 2 who need to be turned Q2H. That's just a taste of how the acuity has of patients has degraded. I have a friend who was an acute care nurse for a couple of years about 40 years ago before going into decades of school nursing and I have to bite my tongue until it bleeds every time she tells me about how they used to have 8 patients apiece and they gave baths and backrubs to every one of the them every day! Good for you! You wouldn't last an hour with the patients I have these days! The work is a lot harder, the responsibility is greater (we really are expected to be MDs when there is none around), and the charting duties are off the hook. There are plenty of areas of nursing to get back into; acute care is just about the hardest (and most thankless) to do.

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Specializes in LTC, assisted living, med-surg, psych.
At the stroke of midnight tonight, after almost 25 years at it, I am officially resigned and done with acute care. I am in another phase of nursing now, one that isn't hospital based. I feel very free, free at last!!! But I wonder if I will be missing the excitement, the fast pace, the gossip:coollook: and most of all the patients. Anyone here leave hospital nursing and regret it?

In a word: No.

In two words: HELL no.

I still have what I suspect is a touch of PTSD related to working in a hospital, five years after I left Med/Surg nursing for the last time. Some nights I wake up in terror after having nightmares about being back there again! Maybe it's because I was in a toxic environment where the older nurses always seemed to draw the hardest assignments and had the least amount of "clout" among the union bosses as well as the department managers. Or maybe it's because because I spent too many shifts drowning in acutely ill patients and being told to "suck it up" when I'd protest having to take still another new admission after dealing all day with 100% patient turnover, fresh post-ops, crashing BPs, total-care patients with C.diff, and so on.

But whatever the reason, I have never regretted leaving the acute care setting for an instant. Not even when the thought occurs to me that I'd be making >$40 an hour by now if I'd stayed. No amount of money is worth losing one's marbles........nope, if I were to feel bad about quitting acute care, it would be because I didn't do it soon enough.:down:

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Specializes in CVICU, Obs/Gyn, Derm, NICU.

I would love to give up acute care.

However I also love (and need right now) the opportunity and flexibility acute care provides.

I enjoy earning a decent amount too.

One day I will go PRN and work 8 hrs a fortnight .... just enough to keep up hours and say hi to everyone :)

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Oh hell no.

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