What's the shortest time you stayed at a job and why did you leave?

Nurses General Nursing

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for me it was 3 days. It was an extra job and I realized I didn't need the stress of working

in a more stressful environment than my

main job so I never picked up shifts there.

Specializes in Med-Surg/Neuro/Oncology floor nursing..

A year and a day. I was just serving my time to gain experience so I could move onto a better place. I was a new grad and this place was my only offer. It was a small community hospital with a "I wouldn't bring my dog there" reputation. It looked like a very large crackhouse and it was just scary and decaying...and the staff wasn't much better! You could tell they all hated their jobs..morale was very low and no one absolutely no one wanted to help me when I was brand new. Standards were very low so no one noticed or cared if charting wasn't done, no one wasted narcs with a witness, the next shift some of the nurses were hours late it was just a very dangerous environment. They have since closed down..surprise surprise.

Specializes in Med-Surg/Neuro/Oncology floor nursing..
I don't think it was even two weeks. This was my very first CNA job about 30 years ago. It was a filthy and nasty nursing home.

The air in the place was straight up stale urine and feces. The smell clung in my hair and clothes. Foul!

The call buttons and bed rails were caked with dried feces.

I had my purse stolen the first day I was there.

An elderly man fell out of bed. He was just tossed back up in like a bag of trash. No one reported it to the nurse and no assessment for injury done. I was told it was no big deal.

I caught two CNAs making out on the end of a bed.

I was harassed for getting a compliment from a resident who told me I was "nice". The aides (all much older than me) were mocking me like I was in grade school, like "Oooh! Isn't she so niiiiiice!"

The aides lined up on both sides of the hall, waiting for me to walk by (which I was determined to do, though I knew it would not be pleasant) and they proceeded to further mock me and blow straw wrappers in my face.

Oh, but the childish shenanigans continued as a couple of the aides were adamant I should eat this chocolate cake that they brought from the soiled utility room.

Watched the aides loudly make fun of and verbally abuse: an old man who defecated in the shower, an old lady whose breasts were pendulous and tucked under her arms (!) and another lady crying in the tub because she was cold.

Finally, a teeny tiny old lady urinated in her wheelchair. Oh, she was wearing a brief, but it had been on her so long, the urine poured on out over the sides of her wheel chair. I watched this aide scoop the old gal up in one one arm, fling the completely drenched egg crate into the trash and then plop the woman back down in the chair. No, the aide still did not change the brief.

Now, after all the crap I put up with there, that last one finally threw me over the edge. I don't know what the hell I was thinking, but anyone with any sense would have been gone after the first day.

I walked into the ADON's office, handed her my stinky blue smock and gait belt. I told her I'd never seen anything so disgusting in all my life (all 18 years of it!) and I was walking out now (finally!). To this day, I remember her shocked face and still cannot figure out why she would have been shocked. There was no way she did not know she worked for a stink-hole and that the employees were trash.

Well, that was the shortest. Immediately after that, I went to the nicest darn LTC in the world and stayed there for 12 years (and still rate it as one of the best experiences of my life).

P.S.

I've told some of these stories on here before. Sorry, for the repeat. Also, sorry for the length.

That is atrocious. I just don't understand why people work in healthcare with patients when they obviously don't like patients! I dont like kids oh I know!! Ill become a school teacher!!! SMH

Specializes in Geriatrics, Home Health.

45 minutes, at a nursing home outside Boston.

It was January 2009. I had graduated from nursing school the previous May, and passed the NCLEX in July. The Great Recession had hit, and NO ONE wanted new grads. Job postings literally said "no new grads" or "this position is not open to new grads" or "we are not hiring new grads at this time." My husband was reluctant to leave his job and his very old father, and my mother was diagnosed with cancer 2 weeks after I graduated, so relocation wasn't really an option.

I had interviewed at this nursing home in December, still looking for my first nursing job. They hired me a few weeks later, for 2 8-hour night shifts a week. i figured we all have to start somewhere, and since I would be making more than double my call center pay, I could work both jobs and pay off some debt.

They wanted me to orient on day shift, so my first shift was at 9 am on a Monday. It was MLK day, the day before Obama's first inauguration. The T was on a holiday schedule, so the trip there took 2-1/2 hours, including a 1-mile walk through 6 inches of freshly fallen snow. Still, I arrived on time, ready to go.

I sat in the DON's office for 20 minutes while she went somewhere. Then she sent me to the day room, where I spent 25 minutes fetching cups for the nurse passing meds. Then the DON called me back to her office.

She said there had been some changes. First, the position was now per diem. Second, the day room nurse was also orienting, and they didn't have the budget for 2 orientees, so she was sending me home. She told me to call back next week and see what she could do. In disbelief, I walked out and got a bus home.

When I called on Friday to check in, she said the job had been cancelled. I never filled out any paperwork, so I was never paid for my 45-minute shift.

After branching out geographically, I finally found another job, 2 months and 250 miles away. I spent a year working at an ALF, followed by 6 weeks in Nursing Home Hell, before I found a job in Home Health.

This and other experiences are the reason I will sell my body on the street before I work in another nursing home.

Specializes in Case manager, float pool, and more.

8 weeks at a hospice facility somewhere. It was for-profit and just a stand alone place. Place had meetings where the administrator made IMO, inappropriate comments regarding the patients at staff meetings. I seen falsification of documentation by staff and the physicians that made the patient's appear sicker than they were. There was also documentation of visits that did not happen. Apparently there was an investigation and the place was closed down.

Only reason I stayed as long as I did was I was looking for another job.

Specializes in ER.

Four months in an ER. They enforced not having anything, even water, at the nurses station, breaks were not a guaranteed thing. Nurses looked for anything to write you up about- not supportive at all. The docs only saw two patients an hour, even when we were crazy busy, so we were constantly apologizing for the wait. The admitting docs would all come after office hours to write admission orders, so we'd have all the admissions going to the floors at once (they loved that) then take on new ER patients and full assessments, in the last hour of the shift. It was brutal.

Specializes in Med/Surge, Psych, LTC, Home Health.

Worked at a local nursing home as a 3-11 shift supervisor, for two months.

My first and only real management/administrative position. Never once

did I really feel like I knew what the heck I was doing. Spent most of

every shift putting out fires, handling complaints. LOTS of admissions

and paperwork from that. Otherwise... really never had a clue what I

was doing. Really. Hated that job with every fiber. It was in a horrible

neighborhood, to boot.

I quit after a 4 orientation. It was a long term acute care facility that specialized in comatose patients. It was chaotic and dirty. My new boss was faking my orientation with badly photocopied outdated HR forms and videotapes. I was a new grad and had no experience in healthcare but was going to be on my own that night, supervising LVNs and CNAs. I looked at my phone and saw an offer letter for a better job I had interviewed for several weeks before.

Is it just in my area, or are all of these beautiful new facilities with fireplaces, fieldstone exteriors, and lavish interior design just facades for an unacceptably unsafe working environment?

Yes! I had a very hard job at an LTAC and visitors raved about the wing back chairs and aquarium in the lobby.

Three months at a doctors office.

The staff was pretty okay, I was pretty okay, but I was going through a Dark Place/Existential Crisis in my personal life.

I left the office, reinvented myself for a few years, then came back to nursing.

Specializes in ICU; Telephone Triage Nurse.

I had been on medical disability for about 10 years and decided to try working again through social security's ticket to work program. I was contacted by a home working based company called X. X helped all sorts of disabled people who wanted to try to re-enter the work force from home - I was hired as an RN (also home based) to call other workers employed by X to evaluate them annually to ensure they still qualified to work from home based upon continued disability.

I was offered $7.00 a form - the form and call could take up to an hour to complete. Even working as fast as I could this was far below minimum wage, let alone even the worst pay an RN may earn.

I also had to call people using my own phone (at the time I had a crappy flip cellphone, otherwise I had to pay for the call on my landline). I also used my own computer.

They "forgot" to pay me twice. I made peanuts.

I quit after 1.5 months and started looking for a real job. When I informed the person who hired me (and was also taking advantage of me) she had a cow, and had the audacity to complain that I had just started. I had to laugh - I just couldn't help it!

Sadly, there were many RN's they were also taking advantage of too.

Specializes in ICU; Telephone Triage Nurse.

I worked 2 shifts PRN at a nursing home about 1.5 years after graduating. I filled in for the LPN who had some blessed time away from this hell hole. It was 1996-ish, and pay in Tucson was very low (I started at $12.75 - the highest pay as a new grad in Tucson in 1994, at the primary trauma medical center in the city). This nursing home offered me $27.00/hr - I covered the LPN's duties, but was paid as a PRN RN. To this day I still don't know how the LPN managed it all in 8 hr's!

There was a giant med cart, and a giant treatment cart - both had to be pushed throughout the facility. There were pictures of the residents but they all resembled each other to someone who didn't know them. Plus, they wandered to the dining room and weren't always in their rooms. I barely managed to pass all the meds before the end of my shift.

I never got to the treatment cart.

There was also a lockdown unit (the CNA blithely told me the code was 357 - then followed up with, "Get it? That's the only way they're leaving! Gafaw!" ... Oh brother ...). I nearly got my eyes clawed out sneaking a gluteal IM antibiotic injection to an uncooperative, combative little woman with dementia in a shower room - it was only the CNA's that saved me. Why was she allowed to grow 3 inch razor sharp claws anyway!?! This was so not my cup of tea ...

There was a legion of CNA's, and an RN whom proudly and pompously over saw the whole show, whom I had termed "queen bee". Queen bee wore all white head to toe, and comically topped it off with a tiny little nurse's hat (we weren't required to wear those for years by then, and I gave myself high points for not laughing) so everyone knew she was the RN. She was in her early 60's and never got off her skinny butt to help. She rudely referred to the CNA's collectively as "the kids" although some had been doing it for over 30 years and had refined their jobs to an art form. She also thought she was my boss, and I set her to rights the very first day (my son had an injury and my husband called from the ER - this was in the bad ole days before cellphones). We were told in orientation that we weren't allowed to get phone calls except in dire circumstances - I felt having a child at the ER qualified in my opinion, and I told her to mind her own business (she took issue with that - go figure). I informed her I had the same qualifications she had and to buzz off. I helped the CNA's whereas she did not - we were never going to be besties I guess.

They called me a couple of other times, but I blew them off. As far as I was concerned, the devil would wear fur mukluks and go snow skiing before I would ever set foot there again.

5 months. My first job as a new grad RN in a rural multipurpose facility with a 12 bed residential ward, 7 bed general ward and 2 bed ED. There were 2 aged care staff, usually with at least one EN (?LPN) to look after the 12 residents and only 1 RN to cover the ward and ED. I was assured that I would be supported by the NM and educator, well trained and only placed on shifts where they were there. My orientation was only 2 days, most days I had to do general ward meds as well as the residental meds as the medication endorsed aged care staff didn't feel comfortable enough to do them. I had to do full care for the general ward knowing that at any moment a Ambulance will turn up, a patient will walk in to ED or a resident will need you due to injury or illness and you have to go deal with that (the aged care staff would handle basic care of general ward while I was gone). The educator and NM would come help me in ED if I needed but would do bare minimum then leave me with no idea of what to do or where to go from there, I also got many comments of "we need to get you up to speed so we can put you on your own". I had so many uncertainties with meds or procedures and constantly felt like i was a huge burden on the NM and educator because I was coming to them yet again with a question. I would never have time to read patient notes or look up anything, I would have to hit the floor running, often going without lunch, toilet or drinks and leaving late with a splitting headache. Every day I was overwhelmed and terrified that I would make a mistake and hurt someone. My days off I couldn't relax and I spent the whole time panicking about going back. I felt like I had very little support and was so overwhelmed everyday that I couldn't learn or think critically, I was just mindlessly completing tasks. I eventually decided that I was crazy to continue putting my mental health and my patients at risk and I quit.

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