is anyone else stressed out?

Nurses General Nursing

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recently i have found it harder and harder to go to work. i find myself not wanting to be a nurse anylonger, but i still need to work to support my family and don't have any job skills other than nursing. i work day shift and you can't find that many places. plus i live very close to my job and with the price of gas that is important. the floor i work on is a med surg floor and has been considered the best floor in our hospital. if you are sick that is where you want to be. it just seems every day we are expected to work harder and faster and never told we are doing anything right- only more things we should be doing as far as paper work etc. i guess this is just a pahse in my life and i hope this too passes, but i know that i am really stressed out about this now.:scrying:

The only thing that can keep any of us sane is to tolerate that because we do what we love. Now, that is not true for me. I didn't go to college to be a claim rep. I fell into it because I couldn't find anything else with a business degree. As nurses, you all must have some love in your heart for the profession because you worked so hard to become one. Try to remember why you went into nursing. Think about the way those reasons show up in what you do from day to day. Hopefully they can lessen the stress of the negative side of your job. If not, maybe it is worth looking into other lines of work. But remember that every job is going to have it's drawbacks.

Hope this makes some sense...

I don't love what I do. It's a job, and it will always be a job. There's no "love in my heart." That wasn't on the skills checklist. I worked hard to become a nurse because I saw limited options if I failed. I continue at it because I have bills to pay.

If you chose nursing because you are looking for a career with less stress than what you are doing now, you chose badly.

Today I work in a med/surg/telemetry unit and am about to throw in the towel. Unworkable work loads, mountains of paperwork in our so called paperless unit. I resent having to be responsible for the LVN's work and for the med techs performance.... If they don't do their job correctly somehow that reflects upon me.:o

I hurt my back the other day having to lift a 400 lb patient with not enough help. The Nursing Supervisor could care less about me.... she seems to resent me for this. I have never had a work related injury in all these years. The patient was in severe respiratory distress and I couldn't always find sufficient help when needed. Makes me feel like a disposable piece of equipment.

I am not a happy camper.:sniff:

I work on med/surg as an aide, and there are notes posted everywhere that RN's are responsible for this - and then there's a big long list, such as responsible for signing off on LPN's care plans, etc.

I'm just an aide and I feel like a disposable piece of equipment. I have spent 5 years there (the second longest, if that tells ya something) and was told that when a 3 12hr shifts came open, it was mine. Looked at the schedule and they hired someone new for that shift. Where's the respect??? Where's the support? I rarely see management on the floor. DON does my eval but I NEVER see her so how can she possibly evaluate me?

I don't love what I do. It's a job, and it will always be a job. There's no "love in my heart." That wasn't on the skills checklist. I worked hard to become a nurse because I saw limited options if I failed. I continue at it because I have bills to pay.

If you chose nursing because you are looking for a career with less stress than what you are doing now, you chose badly.

I feel exactly the same way. I went into nursing because of many options it has too offer, and honestly feeling like walking away from my job and never look back. I wish I would have known more about my career choice before I started nursing school. Yesterday son of the elderly very confused woman I took care of in our ICU complained about me to charge nurse that I was not "cuddly" enough. Well, I don't have time for that, between two codes, feeding his mother, trying to communicate with her and wiping her bottom for 12 hours long. I am in BSN program now, and upon graduation I will take whatever premed classes I am missing (not many) and will be applying to medical school. I just got enough of the nursing BS, there is no respect for nurses for all their education and hard work. I don't know why we expected to be self-sacrificing angels, I am certainly not the one.

Uhm, and those people wonder where the nursing shortage is coming from.

Specializes in ED, ICU, PSYCH, PP, CEN.

I understand and feel your pain. I had three new pts come into rooms at the same time yesterday, detox, chest pain and hyperkalemia. I got yelled at for not doing all three at the same time. How can I be starting an IV at the same time in 3 different rooms? I am not a magician. Meanwhile a couple of my fellow nurses were sitting chatting at the nurses station. The only saving grace is I know there is no nurse on earth that can start 3 IVs at the same time. But when they find her I will gladly step aside and let her take over. In the mean time I concentrate on taking good care of my patients to the best of my ability and find most of them and their families are patient and gracious and understand what we nurses are up against.

Specializes in geriatrics.

Oh let me top that one! For 14 years I have worked all across this country as an LPN and gave all I could to the profession,which covers *petting* families who go over your head if they hear from their alzheimer's diagnosed father that you forgot to give him his pills! At 53 I was fired from a job I had been on for 9 months,a *fellow nurse* believed this patient and went behind my back and wrote me up. The director believed HER and in the end I was terminated! There were other trumped up charges against me as well,I supposedly left pills in a patients room that didn't belong to him.After checking the MAR,my pay stub and my schedule I found that I hadn't even worked that day!So Yes ,I am stressed,now I have no job and 2 vehicle payments to make because someone who was only in the field 3 years saw fit to discredit me. My attorney is working on this and it's sad that after 14 years of dedication to the ones who needed me I am thrown away as if I were disposable!

Don't know if you'd be interested or if it's still available, but there were Disease and Case management jobs available in Illinois state wide not too long ago..they were home-based. I think you could do a search on Monster or Careerbuilder. I was so envious...I'd love to work from home, I could save so much in gas, child care, and wear and tear on the vehicle. Sorry, I can't remember which search engine I found it on.

wow, it is very scary to hear all these things. i am a recent LPN grad(june 06) and have just taken the nclex today and came here in hopes of finding someone to vent to about the nclex but am feeling even worse reading this. is it really that bad?! i thought that nursing was the best career goal i can ever reach , now im just scared...........say it isnt so!

wow, it is very scary to hear all these things. i am a recent LPN grad(june 06) and have just taken the nclex today and came here in hopes of finding someone to vent to about the nclex but am feeling even worse reading this. is it really that bad?! i thought that nursing was the best career goal i can ever reach , now im just scared...........say it isnt so!

Everyone's experience is different, but the stress seems to be almost universal. A few souls have found the perfect job and they live in Nirvana. I think that's outside Chicago. :)

I wish a forum such as this had existed when I made the decision to go to nursing school in 1983. I didn't know anything about nursing, and the only nurse I knew (my aunt) loved her job. I wasn't even aware of all the other options in healthcare that I might have pursued. I just knew there were doctors and nurses and I wasn't interested in becoming a doctor.

There are so many variables which will impact how you fare as a nurse. You can only take our anecdotal evidence so far. I don't try to scare people off, but I want them to know that, even under the best of circumstances, their inner strength is likely to be severely tested.

I've already done my whining and quit nursing (unless the "perfect" job opens up - from heaven:-)). But today I woke up thinking about freshman clinicals and patients telling what a good nurse I would be because they could see the compasssion in my eyes. Boy, was I flattered. Too bad they couldn't see down the road a few years when on my first job another nurse told me I would never make it on the med/surg floor I was working on (I didn't) because I was too nice.

It makes me very sad, and I am very grateful for a husband who knows that after 30 years he's still married to a dreamer, but I don't have to work and at 55 refuse to subject myself to any more of nursing nightmares. I will always wish, though, that what I thought it was going to be, had been true.

Specializes in A myriad of specialties.

Cheers for, and hugs to, you:cheers:for such longevity in this profession---you've been in this 8 years longer than IHow about a change to a community hospice program or working for a doctor's clinic? Maybe that's what you need---a change of environment! I wish you luck in whatever you decide!!!!!

I don't love what I do. It's a job, and it will always be a job. There's no "love in my heart." That wasn't on the skills checklist. I worked hard to become a nurse because I saw limited options if I failed. I continue at it because I have bills to pay.

If you chose nursing because you are looking for a career with less stress than what you are doing now, you chose badly.

I'm sorry you are also doing a job you don't love. That makes the stressful times so much worse.

One of the things that drew me to look at nursing as a 2nd career option is that it seems there are many career paths within that career. I have very limited opportunities to advance in my current career, so that was intriguing. I certainly don't expect it to be less stressful, but I am hopeful that by realizing this is what I want to do now that I've had more life experience than I had 10 or 15 years ago, that it's something I will have a passion for even when it gets difficult.

The dread, fear and anxiety caused me to leaving nursing after only two years (94-96). I also worked on a busy med-surg floor. Today, I am considering a return to nursing and I can already feel my anxiety level rising.

I'm thinking of seeing a therapist before I re-enter the field just to discuss some coping skills, etc.

Some things that would make it so much easier would be adequate staffing (ain't gonna happen), and better support from nurses and nurse management (I'm hoping it's improved).

I wish you the best. Know that you are not alone and that you are not crazy to feel the way you do. Nursing is a wonderful profession but it is very stressful.

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