Sorry, this is probably the longest post in the history of this message board and probably only few of you will finish reading this (I don't blame you). But I REALLY need a serious vent. So to those of you who will, I am eternally thankfull...
Exhausted, burned out and with my feelings hurt. How can you become assertive? Can you even learn to be assertive or do you have to be born with it? How do you deal with aggressive/assertive co-workers? When do certain nurses stop "eating their young"?(After all I've been there for two years now and feel like I payed at least some of my dues.) Am I just nuts for taking this so seriously? Am I just whining and it's all much easier that I make it out to be? (My darling husband seems to think so.... :uhoh21: )
Sometimes I feel like I'm going to loose it, give up, lay down on the floor and start kicking, pounding my fists and screaming like a baby and just decide to stop being the responsible "I-can-carry-the-weight-of-the-world-on-my-shoulders, I-can-take-it-all" person that I am.
Forgive me for this being very long and excuse my whining, but I just HAVE to vent and I don't know where else to do it.
I'm an LPN in med-surg and I work nights (not by choice but d/t recent LPN lay offs at our hospital and my absence of seniority). I just started nights two months ago but I've been on this unit (and a nurse as a matter of fact) for two years now. I am also a mother of a five year old and of a nine month old. My husband works day shift and my shifts are arranged in such a way, that I absolutely need baby sitting only once a week. (Hubby has the kids on weekends and I don't sleep the first day before and the last day after my shifts.) As you can imagine, I'm exhausted, but I pretty much have no choice. If I quit, given the current LPN sitaution, I am shutting my door to a hospital for good. I can't just stay home because we can't do without the extra money, or better said, I just don't WANT my family to go without it and be merely scraping by. And I can't and don't want to put the kids into full or nearly full time day care, since that would cost me my entire pay check and then why put them through it in the first place? My husband is a construction foreman who doesn't make hundreds of thousands. ....Also my entire family's health insurance is in my name. ...And I'm not even talking about our non-existant retirement plan.
Well, yesterday my baby sitter - my husband's step daughter from his first marriage, was supposed to show up at noon so that I can go to sleep (I worked the night before and was going back for another shift). How big was my surprise, when I came home at eight am and she was allready here WITH her boyfriend... "We had nothing else to do so we just thaught to come in early." No big deal, that I wasn't able to get a shower, to unwind a little or to interact with my kids in peace and quiet, because we live in a small appartment and it was JUST too noisy and too crowded... The BIG DEAL to me was, that next thing I know, my dear BABY SITTER is nodding off on MY couch and her boyfriend is allready hopelessly passed out on MY floor. All because THEY did not sleep all night. ...Now I'm strating to feel like crying. What an awfull feeling of insult and helplessness at the same time. Doesn't anyone have a sense of responsibility? Why didn't they go and get some sleep before they came in? I'm paying her MONEY for this!! Doesn't anyone feel bad for me? Is this all a da#$ party and a joke to you all??? All these things are running through my head, I'm raging inside, but I say nothing... I know, I'll have to go to sleep, because if I don't i will be even more miserable the next night... But I have to leave my kids with someone, who themeselves acts irresponsibly at this point ...I mean I have a NINE MONTH old who gets into everything the second I turn my eyes off of him. And there the sitter is, falling alseep. Anyway, in my own home, I snuck off to the bedroom and whispering called my husband telling him about my dilemma... So he decided, he'll call her, but as usual, all I hear on the phone is laughter, and her saying "Oh, I'm allright dad, I'll be fine.... love ya dad..." !@##%^^%$!! It's all good,right? it's just the overprotective wife...
Well at least she was awake enough now, so I finally mustered the courage to leave them alone and go to sleep with an Ambien on board. They survived. I got whoping five hours of sleep disturbed by periodic awakenings and night mares.
My next night shift was expectadly miserable, but I stayed bussy and did a lot of extra work, helping other nurses and actually doing some paperwork for the oncoming day shift to take a load off of them. I felt pretty good about myself as a nurse untill early in the morning:
First, I found out that someone who was doing chart audits, has written a "Quality Care Reminder" on me for filling out only part of the pre-surgery check lists for patients that were scheduled for surgery in the late afternoon the next day. Normally night shift nurses don't do these check lists at all because some of the things to be checked off on the lists have to be done immediately before the patinet is wheeled off to surgery, so they don't even bother to start them. Silly me for wanting to help.
Second, since I was in the middle section of the hall, I was supposed to split my report between two tape recorders. Well, like many nurses many times before, I didn't do that and taped the two patients that were supposed to be on the othe tape together with my other patients. Fifteen minutes before the end of my shift, as I'm helping a colleague to finish up her meds for the night, this little day shift RN comes in (brand new to hour floor) and she says: could you give me verbal, because I DONT FEEL LIKE listening to the whole tape in break room A... I found that very odd and inappropriate, since I TAPED and I was bussy doing something else... So I told her something like "Well, if you want I can but I allready taped and I would rather finish this..." I didn't realize then that her rationalle was that I taped on the "wrong" tape. This happens all the time and I have never seen anyone make a big deal out of it. But this nurse, after I did at least an hour of her work for her, just to make her day go smoother, just smiled kind of vindictively and said "Never mind, don't worry about it." And stomped off right to their charge nurse. Now this charge nurse is a towering,very loud, very grumpy and very aggressive person who can in an instant make you feel THIS small.... And with her loud,commanding and aggressive voice scolded me infront the entire staff at the nurses station... And yes, I felt THAT small.
Third: After a tearfull and sobby drive home, I get called from work. I made a med error and gave 15 units of NPH instead of 15 units of 70/30.
I think I'm gonna loose it. I think I want to quit... I want to be three years old again... 
.....Anyway, back to changing diapers, reading fairy tales and drawing houses, doggies and momies and daddies with crayons...
If there's anyone who finished reading this, THANK YOU!!! 
:heartbeat: And if there isn't anyone, it's okay, it still felt good to get it out.
waynesbororn
5 Posts
Bless You. I have had many days like you are talking about as an RN. It is very hard to try and stay focused and remember the real reason that we went into nursing in the first place. The rewards we get are from the patients definitely not from our coworkers. I have been blessed by the Thank You's of my patients and their families more than anything else. My husband doesn't understand and many of my coworkers are just as nasty back so its hard to talk to them about it.