How do I continue to do this career? I feel like I’ve tried every available, reasonable option. I’ve worked the floor, I worked the E.R, I’ve travel nursed, I did clinical coordinator, and now I do Home Health....suppose to be part time but never is. I’ve driven 1.5 hours to get to work and I’ve worked 30min away from my home. I have been a nurse for 11 years this month and I’m just tired of trying to make it work. Part of my pain is something that has nothing to do with work...and yet does a little bit. Because I was traveling around and trying to find a fit, and because I can count on one hand the amount of men I have worked with, I did not date much and thus did not get married until I was 33. My husband and I have been trying to have a child and it isn’t working out well. We have been told that IVF is our only realistic option but we can’t even get approved for a loan to do it due to my husband’s previous debt. And unfortunately I only make 50k a year and only have a house payment in my name, but they tell me for my husband and I to get approved for the loan we would need to make about 130k a year. My husband is a tradesman and we have never made more than 80k together in a year. However last year he did not have any work at all (Trumps great economy my ***.) Adoption is about as much as IVF and since my husband and I are older also a kind of long shot. (He is 57 and I am 38).
Yes I could probably go back to travel nursing or return to the ER and make more money than I do now, but I’m just tired. Travel nursing was not terrible, but it is always having to learn a new place, system, doctors, and hope you are following their policies correctly when everyone is to busy for you to ask questions. And it is lonely as my husband can’t get work if he is traveling with me. The ER was okay until my dad died 2 years ago and then all the sudden it got very hard to take care of codes for me. Now I do Home Health which is a cake walk compared to my hospital experience, except the charting. Like I can see all my 6-7 patients in 8.5 hours, and I do try to chart as I see them, but I usually have 2-3 hours of charting to do every evening once getting home. Not to mention that I always have to work a little the day before calling the patients with visit times and organizing my day (my agency requires we call the night before between 5-9pm). I usually drive 80-100 miles a day. And thus I feel like I never get a real day off because either I’m catching up on my charting or I have to be home to receive my schedule (we have EPIC and no longer get the schedule emailed to our phones, it is only on our work computer and I’m not carrying that around everywhere) by a certain time. And if the people doing the schedule are late putting it out then I can’t get to things I want to do like yoga which is from 6pm-7:30pm. As I don’t have a full team of patients that are mine, I always have 4-5 people on my schedule that I am unfamiliar with. So unlike full time people who kind of know who they are going to see day to day, I almost never do.
I just feel there is no winning with nursing. In all of my jobs I almost NEVER get out on time. I almost ALWAYS have more patients than agreed to be caring for in my interview. I mean hell, when my dad died at 11am it took until 6pm for the hospital to get things squared away so I could leave without fear of abandonment. I actively now screen my calls and I NEVER pick up, then get ***ed at for not being a team player. This last job in home health I made it very, very, very clear that my time comes first. It isn’t about money, although I definitely deserve the money they are paying me plus some. I gave back a 10K bonus and was like ‘All I want from you is a work load that allows me to have my life back.’ Needless to say there is always some excuse why I have 7 patients instead of 6, or why my 6 patients are 80-100miles of drive time. I’m just done. There is always some reason why we (me and my coworkers) need to do more and be better. There is minimal education with outrageous expectations. I am just done. I am a good, reliable, safe, and compassionate nurse. I have worked many, many jobs and have maybe met a handful that I could not describe in the same manner. It isn’t us not doing the work right or well or fast enough that’s the problem. It’s the institutions and their ***ing nut job expectations. It is patients that go to hospitals called ‘Hospitality’ (that is the real name of a hospital in the Houston, Texas area BTW) expecting a spa day instead of care and business minded idiots who set up that expectation from the get go by naming their ***ing institution Hospitality. I just want to go to work, do my job, and be allowed to leave on time 90% of the time. I want to be able to pee regularly and have a regular lunch break, and lastly I want to have enough energy when I get home (or the next day) to have sex with my husband so I can hopefully have a family....so I can have my life.
Sadly I just don’t see that as a possibility as a nurse without just being a real ***. Like I am just going to have to say no to being in any committee, to staying late EVER for anyone else, to working extra or working over. I find this really hard to do because I believe in team work. I know that team work is how we make it through, but if I stick to my own I can get done. If I do nothing extra I can be with my husband and not be quite as exhausted. I just don’t see how helping others means I have to sacrifice myself this much and I really don’t see humans as worthy of the sacrifice of myself as I once did when I was 22 and really idealistic. I believe everyone deserves good, data based, compassionate care, just not at the expense of my life and desires....ever.
