1)Feeling picked on, 2) How much is too much? A vent of a nurse/mom loosing her mind.

[Rhonda V]

It really ticks me off how other nurses will cut you down in front of other coworkers then think they can apologize to you in private. I work with a nurse who has been known to do this, and I can't stand her. She loves to make herself look better in front of other coworkers by putting us down when she can. I thought I was the only one until another nurse told me that she did the same thing to her. Also, I don't buy the whole "religious" thing she has going on. She thinks she is so Godly good, but then talks down to her coworkers...and it's so annoying to hear her laugh all day long and joke constantly with the other providers...I just cringe whenever I'm scheduled to work with her.

The best advice I can offer you is to show up to work on time, do your job everyday to the best of your ability, stay quiet but professional, don't spread gossip about other co-workers, and go home. Hope these things help and Good Luck to you!

Rhonda

[BETSRN]

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.

It would probably help you if you do NOT think about doing others' work just to make their day better. Just concentrate on doing your own assignment. That would be a good start.

Secondly, the charge nurse had no business speaking to you that way in front of everyone. I would suggest that you go to her privately and tell her that you felt belittled by her treatment and you would appreciate her NOT doing that again. At that time you might also want to tak to her about any difficul;tiesd you see on the floor.

You need to find better quality childcare. I would also talk with your step daughter about what is and is not appropriate. If you are paying her, you could easily be paying someone else. Could you maybe exchange some childcare with a friend whose kids are similar ages? I know a couple of our night girls do that.

Lastly, get the idea out of your head that you have to carry everyone's load. I don't mean to sound cruel but if you don't take care of yourself first, no one else will.

Stand up for yourself, girl. If you command more resepct, you will be given it. Giving the correct medications is far more important than taping report on the correct machine!

[justmanda]

My patients were on the tape FIRST! So I guess she was being lazy.

What kind of boggles my mind is that the charge nurse didn't think so. :selfbonk:

The order called for 70/30, I wrote down in the flow sheet NPH. And I gave NPH. ...The day shift nurse (not the same as that RN) called me and asked what I actually gave and I told her the truth...

First of all, why did she have to call you at home for that? Gimme a break. Some people just like to be the big heroes. Secondly, and take this from a person who is not very assertive, do not take the antics of your charge nurse or any other nurse personally. The truth is, somewhere out there, there is someone who thinks you're a crappy nurse. That's true for you, for me and for every other nurse. Yesterday, you may have helped save a patient's life. Today, you forget to check a box on an OR form and someone will call you down to the pre-OR area and berate you for being lax. Call a doctor to ask him if he really wants to give Lovenox to a patient who has a GI Bleed and he says "Great catch...d/c the Lovenox". Call a doctor to ask him if you should hold the Digoxin since the patient's heart rate is 60 and you're an idiot. There is nothing you can do about what people think about you. It used to bother me...now it makes me laugh. It should be our new mantra...we should all get t-shirts: Somebody thinks I'm a crappy nurse... and I don't care.

[DG5]

Isn't it wonderful how something can open up for you at the right time. Sounds like that CN is stuck and won't get unstuck by anybody and that attitude won't change. So, moving on sounds great!

[Tweety, BSN, RN]

No advice. Just good vibes coming your way! :)

[estrogen]

It's been almost four months since I've opened this tread, so I thaught I owe you all a little update. First of all, thank you, everyone for all the great advice and the support. The feed back helped me a great deal.

Since that original incident I haven't felt picked on per se, except a few minor exceptions, ie when the charge nurse asked me wether I hear the IV pump of HER patient in one of HER rooms going off, while she was standing directly next to the room charting a the pull down or when she asked me to get HER blood from the lab, while she was - again - charting, not in the least concerned wether I am bussy at the moment or not. But these little incidentsd didn't hurt my personal feelings, since they prooved one thing only - that this lady is incredibly lazy. Whaterver, I told myself... She is at least twenty years older than me and not in the greatest physical shape, maybe it really is a huge deal for her to climb the flight of stairs to the lab, or to interrupt her charting and go fix a darn IV pump... So be it.

About a moth ago, this same charge nurse finally (after five months of being on the shift with her) finally came up to me once with a cup of coffee and engaged in a casual conversation... Great, I thaught, they're finally warming up. Well, we had some sort of nursing conversation about something nurses are supposed to do or not to do, I don't remember the specifics anymore... And what comes our of her mouth? "I don't know how it is with LPNs (I'm an LPN), but NURSES do it this way...." Now I don't think she ment to be mean, I think that she was just being...well... dumb, but internally I was laughing and screaming in frustration "Oh, my Gawwwwd!"

But what finally did it for me was the following brilliant adventure: One morning, half an hour before my shift ended I walked in one of my patients room and she didn't look right. She was kind of ashy, clammy and hard to arouse. Her pulse ox was in the low 80's, high 70's... Well I did all I had to do. Sat her bolt upright, got her a non-re-breather, took vitals, called the doc etc... An hour later she was finally on her way to the ICU, after I called them with report. I clocked our half an hour late. I knew that I am supposed to get the overtime appoved by the house supervisor, which would mean another half an hour of waiting around, untill she shows up etc. I couldn't wait as my husband was waiting at home with the kids to be able to go to work the minute I walked in the door... I just wrote down a note for our manager (who was on vacation that week), that I'm waiving the OT and don't mind if they pay me for it or not, that I just have to go...

A week later I receive a very hostile e-mail from the manager which said something like this: If you worked OT, you get paid OT. There's no such thing as waiving OT. Next time make sure you have the approval from the house supervisor, or you'll get written up.

Well, that was the last straw for me. I was so angry. Not so much because of the hostile tone of the e mail, but because this policy put patient's lives in jeaopardy. Knowing what trouble I will have to go through to get the OT aproval, that it will cost me more time, that my husband won't get to work on time etc., if I was a reckless person, I could have easily just not walked into that patient's room half an hour before the end of my shift. Or I could have just "not seen" the change in her status and that poor lady would have layed there for another hour or two, untill the day shift nurse makes it into the room...

I put my four weeks notice in the next day. This is my last week and I'm starting my new job - three eight hour shifts or two twelves a week in an ECF five minutes from where I live next week. I believe that it will be better for everyone in my family. Less hours, closer to home, I'll make more money and I'm hoping for less stress and more respect and dignity as an LPN... What do you all think?

Please, hold your fingers crossed for me. :)

Oh, and I forgot to add, I ultimately wound up asking the baby sitter not to ome anymore. My 1 y.o. goes to day care now a couple times a week and my five y.o. to sports camp at the YMCA, until Kindergarten starts.

[gr8rnpjt, RN]

There seems to be a problem that some "day" nurses think "night" nurses are lazy or just seem to treat them with disrespect. When I was in direct patient care, I was steady night turn and there was a definite lack of respect. I cannot attribute it to anything that I did. I also feel that night nurses are not given the credit they deserve, at least when I did it there were 2 RN's to the whole tele unit and we were lucky if we had 2 LPN's. Most of the time we got an aide and an LPN or sometimes just an aide. The LPN's were a Godsend to us because they helped with passing prn's all night and taking vitals which freed us to do the paperwork for HALF THE UNIT!! I really think the day nurses did not appreciate what we were responsible for but I know if we weren't there and they had to work nights, the attitudes may have been adjusted a little. I was very glad to leave.

Your story brought me back to my younger days, and the frustration I dealt with. I truly feel for you and hope your situation gets better. Try to concentrate on only the night nurse duties, do the best job you can, and if you don't do anything extra, it will make you feel better to know you did not do anything to make that snippy day nurses job any easier!

OOPs!! Just saw your most recent post!

Congratulations on your new position!

Hope the people are nicer and the job is easier!

[chelojelo]

There seems to be a problem that some "day" nurses think "night" nurses are lazy or just seem to treat them with disrespect. When I was in direct patient care, I was steady night turn and there was a definite lack of respect. I cannot attribute it to anything that I did. I also feel that night nurses are not given the credit they deserve, at least when I did it there were 2 RN's to the whole tele unit and we were lucky if we had 2 LPN's. Most of the time we got an aide and an LPN or sometimes just an aide. The LPN's were a Godsend to us because they helped with passing prn's all night and taking vitals which freed us to do the paperwork for HALF THE UNIT!! I really think the day nurses did not appreciate what we were responsible for but I know if we weren't there and they had to work nights, the attitudes may have been adjusted a little. I was very glad to leave.

Your story brought me back to my younger days, and the frustration I dealt with. I truly feel for you and hope your situation gets better. Try to concentrate on only the night nurse duties, do the best job you can, and if you don't do anything extra, it will make you feel better to know you did not do anything to make that snippy day nurses job any easier!

OOPs!! Just saw your most recent post!

Congratulations on your new position!

Hope the people are nicer and the job is easier!

I totally agree that night nurses get the least respect. I worked as a day shift nurse for years, then a year and a half ago switched to night shift at a different facility to be closer to home, to get 12 hr shifts, more $$, etc. I have learned to never "help out" dayshift nurses by doing any of their work, because if something is wrong, even the little bittiest thing that could be corrected in 2 seconds, the dayshift nurses where i work will take it all the way up to the DON and/or Administrator, and you come out looking like an idiot because you're not there to defend yourself or to make the corrections right there on the spot. It's frustrating, and so is going from being treated as a well respected, knowledgable nurse that ppl came to for help and advice (while working day shift), to being "talked down to" at times and coming into work at night to find notes taped to the nurses station with your name on them telling you what all you've done wrong, or telling you about something you did/didn't do that was supposed to be the other way around. Never mind that if you were there when these "mistakes" were found, you could point out then and there that you had made no mistake or that something they thought wasn't done actually was, or vice versa. By the time you come in to work and find these "notes", or get a message on your voicemail, you've already been tied to the stake and everyone thinks you're a moron!

[chadash]

This must be sooooo frustrating! Go a little easier on yourself for a while and concentrate on your own stuff (it is nice to help, but everyone has their limits, I know I do!)

[nursemike, ASN, RN]

Best wishes in your new position. Thanks for the update. It's good to hear that things are going better for you. I doubt if a nurse's life is ever exactly easy, but manageable is nice.

Please let us know how it's going as you get settled into the new job.