So I'm fired. Again.

Nurses General Nursing

Published

I must be the worst nurse in the world.

Now I need to figure out my next step. And it isn't nursing.

No specific reason. They think I "could" be unsafe.

Pffft.

{{{{bigpicture}}}}

Happy birthday!

And hang tough. People who appreciate you will be there. When I don't know, but an employer worthy of you will pick you up.

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Oh, and retail ain't low stress. I worked at JoAnnes and WalMart prior to going back to nursing school - my six figure systems job was outsourced, as was my husband's - and there's nothing as hard as being on your feet for eight hours with customers who treat you like, well, the help, and managers who can't bear to see you breathe. Kinda like nursing.

;)

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Specializes in rehab, antepartum, med-surg, cardiac.

Suesquatch,

A lot of us have had bad work situations. I once worked a job for about 8 months that I really hated. My supervisors were mean and the charge nurse wrote things in my evaluation (which she laid on the medication cart in the middle of a very busy nursing station) that were not true, like that I left narcotics at the bedside in a patient's room.

I think that they were setting me up to get me fired or worse, so I quit that job and didn't look back. What a horrid place. Since then, I have worked places that were good and not so good, but I have never worked anywhere where I felt my license might have been threatened like at that place. I wrote a rebuttal and placed it in my HR file and I went to the DON to complain about the evaluation. I told her, "I have never received an evaluation like this in my life. If this were someone else's evaluation, I would probably think the person needed to be fired."

Suesquatch, life is too short to stay somewhere you are truly unhappy. I hope you find your niche in nursing sometime soon. If there is a problem that you can fix, then work on it, but sometimes it isn't you, it's the culture of the organization. Sometimes the workplace is sick :barf02:and you need to run, not walk away.

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Specializes in Med/Surg, ID, Oncology, Ortho.

Hi Sue,

I am so sorry that this happened to you. Your date of "departure" from your old toxic workplace was 2 days after my forced resignation from a very hostile work environment. I find that I am still licking my wounds a good 3 weeks later.

Fortunately, I have only had this one instance of a maniacal dictator of a director. I've found that for the most part, Nurse Managers and Directors truly want their staff to be content and sucessful. After all, our job satisfaction is (in)directly related to how good their units look on paper.

Don't give up ~ I'm not. ;)

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Suesquatch, the wishful thing to do it finish your classes, get experience and respect, and as quickly as nurses change jobs, one of them may be reporting to you one day.

I was given grief by a particular nurse and I had to move on. Time passed (5 yrs), and then one day she hired in at the same hospital I was working at and guess who she had reported to ---me --briefly--- before I canned her!!!!

Strange and wonderful things like this happen in nursing all the time. Keep in mind, what goes around, comes around. It's karma.

My prayers are with you and your family.

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I know this is demoralizing. Hostile work environments abound in nursing, "nurses eat their young". However, take a deep breath and after a good cry: write a list of "WHY I CAME INTO THIS CARREER". It is about the people you WILL and DO help, not about the preceptors.

WE BELIEVE IN YOU!!!

best,

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Specializes in Medical Surgical.

I honestly can not believe that none of you believe that Suesquatch had any part in either of her dismissals. This criticism of everyone but her perpetuates the idea that nurses eat their young and that most hospitals are a terrible place to work for new nurses. I believe as much as th next person that we need to support each other, but does it need to be to a fault? No one but Suesquatch really knows the story of her jobs ending. Why are you all so quick to blame everyone else? 21 pages of support is getting a little ridiculous. I just wanted to bring a little reality to the situation.

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It hasn't been 21 pages.

And you're right: only Suesquatch knows. We shouldn't criticize others and maybe you shouldn't criticize her.

Allnurses is a support and learning system. If a nurse falters, what is the point of pushing him/her down more by our words? Isn't it better to stay positive and oh, I dunno, be supportive? Even if Sue made a med error (and we don't know that she did), does it serve a purpose to criticize her for that? Hasn't everyone made a mistake at work? I think it would be better to reinforce the 5 rights. Instead of focusing on the negative focus on the positive.

Sue said that she was deemed as possibly being unsafe. They did not give her specifics. Without specifics how is she to know what she needs to work on? And let's face it, we all need to work on something.

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This criticism of everyone but her perpetuates the idea that nurses eat their young and that most hospitals are a terrible place to work for new nurses.

considering the tone of your post, heather, i find the above statement most ironical.

no, we don't know what happened.

and according to sue, she's not so sure either.

but what most of us DO know, is the op is known to be warm, funny, sincere and sometimes, brutally honest.

we know this, through yrs of online communication.

with all due respect, please, have someone else for dinner.

leslie

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The thing I've noticed about Sue since I've been reading this site is that she's about as up front and forthcoming as she could be.

She doesn't need us to be critical; she's hard enough on herself already. So my point is,knowing this, we should take her word that they gave no specific reason, and support her!

Perhaps you will better understand the politics of the healthcare profession once you actually start to work in it.

No offense meant by that.;)

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Specializes in Medical Surgical.

Sorry I mixed up my numbers. I meant to write 12 pages. I understand being supportive and I am all for it. But if we go to work with a bad attitude because we do not like what we are doing, and she did write that she did not, what is the patient gaining? And does it do the facility she was let go from any good to get rid of a good nurse? I don't think so. So don't you think that something sounds fishy when 3 different preceptors agreed that she could be unsafe? And that this is the second facility she was let go from? I am not trying to single out Sue, but we all need to remember (including me) that touting about how wonderful someone is when she may be the wrong one here isn't doing her any good. Every bad experience is an opportunity to gain some insight into how we can better ourselves, and everyone telling her how right she is and how wrong everyone else is is a mistake in my opinion. Thanks

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Been there, done it. Don't let it get you down. You're so new into your career. Sometimes preceptors, like it or not, talk to each other and tend to color each others opinions. I'll bet that this is what happened to you. Keep applying to new positions, you'll find the right fit. One thing to take with you, remember what these preceptors said you did wrong. Once armed with what can go wrong, you'll come out on top.:balloons:

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