Feeling extremely underappreciated

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Hi everyone!

So, to cut to the chase, here it is:

I work in a PEDS ER as a Paramedic. Going to school to apply to nursing at this time. This is my issue:

im approaching 12 weeks employment. And I love my job, there's just one problem; I feel like I'm constantly underappreciated and everyone's little toy. All the nurses can be sitting on their phones or something and they're like do vitals on this patients. Do this. Do that. I need this. I need that. When I need a little help too you know. Also I wipe down the beds before and after patients and it really aggravates me when I'm busy with patients in the triage area and i walk back and find dirty rooms. WHAT WERE YOU DOING? Sometimes I just feel like I'm constantly being pulled. They won't do their own vitals. Or even wipe down a bed or table. They won't EVER do crutches or splints. I enjoy my job but sometimes I get extremely overwhelmed when all these nurses are sending me to do things while they're sitting down. Mean while, I barely sit, if I'm drinking water it never fails for someone to tell me to do something. They all get to eat their lunch at a reasonable time and here I am waiting till 2:30 or so to eat because I'm just too busy to break away. It's really aggravating me. It makes me think, you're a nurse, but you can't do these small things? Or is it that they think they are above taking vitals or doing splints. They also refer to me as a nurses aid, when I am a PARAMEDIC. I have a license. I went to school for this. How do I handle all of this?

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You may be a paramedic, but your position in the hospital is defined by your hiring job description.

You have 12 weeks experience in the hospital ... way too soon to judge the actions of professional nurses.

Keep your head down, watch and learn, pay your dues.. and earn respect as a CNA/paramedic.

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Specializes in ICU.

So, your saying all the nurses do is sit there and play on their phones, while you run around doing everything? Who's assessing, passing meds, getting lab results, calling report, and discharging? Oh and let's not forget the massive amount of charting that has to be done on each patient.

Yes, you are a paramedic, which applies outside the hospital walls. When you are employed inside the hospital walls, you re a tech. That is your scope of practice, which includes all of the job duties you just described.

You are new. You are already complaining. I think you need to look at things from another perspective. I just think you don't understand what all a nurse does.

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Welcome to being an aide.

Edit: for clarification. All these things that people are asking you to do are your job.

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OP, when I use my phone at work, it's because I'm looking up a medication. Don't assume.

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You probably will feel under appreciated a lot of the time, unfortunately.

I have witnessed RNs at my facility who wouldn't answer a call light if the patient's room was on fire and they were holding the hose. Our CNAs work their butts off (and they are awesome!) and our floor is pretty good at remembering that CNAs are there to assist the RN with the RNs patients. Ultimately they are OUR patients. It bugs the crap out of me when nurses pawn stuff off on CNAs---and I mean when the nurse is not otherwise occupied by charting or patient care.

We we had a nurse a while back who would bark orders at the CNAs. I said something to the nurse, it was driving me crazy. I believe in a very simbiotic relationship with the CNAs...they can make our jobs easier or they can make them very, very difficult. Many of our CNAs are also in nursing school and will be working in that capacity in a few years...how welcoming to a new position if you've been crapped on for the years you worked as a CNA :sour:

Bottom line is be the kind of employee that you'd want to work with. Appreciated or not, do your thing and do it well. At the end of your shift you can leave those people there and thank the universe that you don't have to live with them ;)

Good luck to you!!

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Specializes in Critical Care; Cardiac; Professional Development.

Nobody likes being bossed around, but that is your role at this time. You are an assistant to the nurses. None of the things you outlined are outside of your daily job duties. No way would I ever in a million years have had time to physically clean a room when I worked in acute care. You are there to take over the things that need doing but do not require a license to be done. I worked as a tech during nursing school too. It is a very hard, taxing job.

You do not know what you don't know. Are there some nurses out there who delegate more than is necessary? Of course. Are ALL of them that way? Of course not.

Your job is hard. Put your head down, do your time and make yourself indispensable. You want their first thought when you are graduating to be "Boy, we cannot afford to lose that person"...not "Great....an easy to chance to get rid of them now that they want to work as an RN".

An advice just for life in general.....almost all unhappiness is caused by our comparing the way things are to how we wish they would be. Stop worrying about whether or not someone else is doing enough by your standards. Live up to your own standards and maintain your self respect.

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Hi everyone!

So, to cut to the chase, here it is:

I work in a PEDS ER as a Paramedic. Going to school to apply to nursing at this time. This is my issue:

im approaching 12 weeks employment. And I love my job, there's just one problem; I feel like I'm constantly underappreciated and everyone's little toy. All the nurses can be sitting on their phones or something and they're like do vitals on this patients. Do this. Do that. I need this. I need that. When I need a little help too you know. Also I wipe down the beds before and after patients and it really aggravates me when I'm busy with patients in the triage area and i walk back and find dirty rooms. WHAT WERE YOU DOING? Sometimes I just feel like I'm constantly being pulled. They won't do their own vitals. Or even wipe down a bed or table. They won't EVER do crutches or splints. I enjoy my job but sometimes I get extremely overwhelmed when all these nurses are sending me to do things while they're sitting down. Mean while, I barely sit, if I'm drinking water it never fails for someone to tell me to do something. They all get to eat their lunch at a reasonable time and here I am waiting till 2:30 or so to eat because I'm just too busy to break away. It's really aggravating me. It makes me think, you're a nurse, but you can't do these small things? Or is it that they think they are above taking vitals or doing splints. They also refer to me as a nurses aid, when I am a PARAMEDIC. I have a license. I went to school for this. How do I handle all of this?

It's going to get a lot worse after you graduate from nursing school. There will be a lot more people telling you what to do and you'll have even less time to do it. Working as a CNA can be physically exhausting, but mentally, it's a vacation.

It's very likely that your perspective will change as you move forward. As a nursing student at various clinical sites, I thought CNAs did all the work and the nurses just sat around. I could not have been more wrong.

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Well I'm not as high up as you are but I definitely understand your situation. I work 6a-2p but I come in around 4:30am and literally do not sit down till 1:50 to chart (if I'm lucky.) I walk back and forth getting people ready ,changing,bathing, then look over at our hardworking bosses sitting and laughing,gossiping.while on the clock of course. Now, there are a few nursing that actually offer to help, which is very kind. But there's others you'd have to beg to help you pass a lunch tray to patients. It makes me sick. It is so easy to feel underappreciated especially by the people over you. But I've started to just look at it as as long as my patients appreciate me and the families do, I couldn't give a crap what anyone over me thinks because it's all about the people we take care of, not coworkers.

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I am a paramedic in the hospital. That is my job title.

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Help me understand a bit here, since my ED doesn't have paramedics practicing as paramedics... what is your job description? I'm trying to figure out what in the medic scope of practice you'd do in the ED.

I am a paramedic in the hospital. That is my job title.
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Usually Triage/do vitals when they first come in. IV's. Blood work. Help hold down to give shots. Let me clarify. I don't have a problem doing vitals and triaging and IV's. (I have PALS NRP and ACLS) during times when we get a rescue and do the EKG, all of that stuff. I do assess and hand off to the nurse and they choose either to assess for themselves or take what I give them. I don't have a problem doing my job, I love kids and I love my job. (My unit doesn't even transfer a lot. It's mostly kids with just fever or something else like strep) it just bothers me when I'm used like a pawn and I'm not called by my job title. It bothers me even more when people are sitting around gossiping and 4 nurses are telling me at once to recheck vitals and do a splint or whatever while they're all sitting, talking, gossiping. I think what I was posting didn't get accross to some people. I think whoever it is. The paramedic, CNA, MD whatever all of us need to work together. I shouldn't be abused and neither should the nurse by the doctor. I'm only one person. I can't do 4 kids vital signs at once and do this line for one kid and this other thing. It would just be nicer if one of them did like a part of that so I'm not running around like a crazy person.

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