WHY do so many people hate nursing? Sigh.

Nurses General Nursing

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I feel like everywhere I go people are expressing their hate for nursing rather than their love. I want to go into nursing, and I want to love it. WHY does everyone (almost) hate it so much? Is it really that bad? Can someone express their love for it? I would really enjoy hearing why you love your nursing job.

Personally I could never work in a nursing home, but my goal is to work in the OB/NICU or the ER.

Thanks!

- Super desperate pre-nursing student venting

becksterc, please use the quote feature. Thanks.

I'm just going to say this and I'm going to be frank ; I'm a 52-year-old nurse who decided to go into nursing after 12 years of working as a CNA in hospice care. Some of those years were working on my own and not under a company. I absolutely loved it because I love caring for people. I love being there to help somebody through the dying process also I adore and respect my seniors and I still love it! What I despise are the people you work for; hospitals, nursing homes, etc. they're all about the money, their nasty, hateful, and all you are is a number , just like their patients.......you are easily replaced. I have been pushed around and had my share of being bullied. Nursing is suppose to be a professional position but its like going back to high school. When I first came out of nursing school I had older, washed up, burned out nurses pushingme around, they threw me out to the wolves and then laughed about it with each other behind my back all those teachable moments wasted on their ego's. This was so disheartening to me because I loved caring for people and have always been a nurturing person. But I hung in there and worked three years in cardio, two years in endoscopy, and two years as a nurse supervisor of a home care company.......now I have decided to downsize and I just started two weeks ago at a memory care unit in a nursing home .....there really are no skilled nursing involved just med pass, Keeping the resident safe and giving them love and care, my forte. I have a Novice, 6 month, AS nurse as my nurse manager and with a real attitude. mostly because she gave up her position, ( which I now have) to except a Nurse Mgr position....she regrets it and now is trying to make my life hell and set me up so she can take back her position. I was offered her position but I do not want it... I took a $4 an hr cut in pay to leave a position such as hers, simply becuz I like the hrs- Mon-Thurs, 6a-2p. So here I go all over again; nastiness!!

So to be 100% honest this is not the profession I would chose again if I had the choice. I would have went for physical therapy, where you can see the results of your skills as well as you independently work on your own and make a heck of a lot more $ and you wouldn't have someone standing over you trying to make up for their own lack of confidence and competence by projecting ....... For me it's too late for that because now I'm 52 and I retire in 10 years. I have thought about going onto my masters because I have a BA degree but I decided just to wait it out until I retire in 10 years; and for me that cannot come soon enough! If I had a daughter and she was condersidering a nursing career I most definitely would steer her in a different direction.

It use to be awesome to be a nurse but now it's all about money and profit. Burn out is getting really high. In the last 5 to 8 years hospitals and most of health care has been taken over by Wall Street investment firms and their only focus is profit so patient loads have gone way up, and staff has been cut way back. The largest hospital chain in the world is owned by Bain Capitol (Mitt Romney's company) and the link cost cuts to their administrators bonuses not mortality rates or readmission rates or even those stupid satisfaction surveys. We are becoming sweat shop workers.

If I could like your post 100 times, I would. You are 200% correct. The entire healthcare industry now sucks. Find me a doctor that is happy. None that i know are. All of them tell me that they went to medical school to treat patients, not to have to ask someone on the other end of the phone with a high school education that is working for an insurance company for permission to order a test or a medication or another therapy for their illness. They didn't go to medical school to write letters of medical necessity in order to beg the insurance company to pay for whatever they've ordered. Many of them have decided that they will no longer write letters of medical necessity---they were spending 4-6 hours after the office closed to write the letters, uncompensated. They won't do it anymore. Many have told me that if the insurance companies denies payment for something they've ordered, and a something happens to the patient that harms, injures or kills them, then they will counter-sue the insurance company that denied payment. They aren't going to take the fall for something the insurance company won't allow to be done that could treat and potentially save someone's life.

Stories that I have been hearing lately from friends of my mother, patients, patient's families & friends just boggle my mind. It is really sad what healthcare has turned into. I bang my head up against the wall daily thinking of anything else I could do & get the hell out of nursing. It is a sad state of affairs. I remember when nursing was fun, I loved going to work, the staff was a very tight, cohesive unit & we were appreciated. Now, we are not valued at all, administration couldn't care less if we dropped dead right on the floor. All we are is a hot body to fill a spot on the schedule.

If I could like your post 100 times, I would. You are 200% correct. The entire healthcare industry now sucks. Find me a doctor that is happy. None that i know are. All of them tell me that they went to medical school to treat patients, not to have to ask someone on the other end of the phone with a high school education that is working for an insurance company for permission to order a test or a medication or another therapy for their illness. They didn't go to medical school to write letters of medical necessity in order to beg the insurance company to pay for whatever they've ordered. Many of them have decided that they will no longer write letters of medical necessity---they were spending 4-6 hours after the office closed to write the letters, uncompensated. They won't do it anymore. Many have told me that if the insurance companies denies payment for something they've ordered, and a something happens to the patient that harms, injures or kills them, then they will counter-sue the insurance company that denied payment. They aren't going to take the fall for something the insurance company won't allow to be done that could treat and potentially save someone's life.

Stories that I have been hearing lately from friends of my mother, patients, patient's families & friends just boggle my mind. It is really sad what healthcare has turned into. I bang my head up against the wall daily thinking of anything else I could do & get the hell out of nursing. It is a sad state of affairs. I remember when nursing was fun, I loved going to work, the staff was a very tight, cohesive unit & we were appreciated. Now, we are not valued at all, administration couldn't care less if we dropped dead right on the floor. All we are is a hot body to fill a spot on the schedule.

i don't blame the insurance industry for this. This has all come about because of what we as a country want, demand, ignore and are willing to contribute to our healthcare, much of it out of selfishness or denial whether we work for a pharmaceutical company, don't take enough responsibility for prevention, concerned with only getting ours, choose longevity over function, our own stock portfolios..

But we can't change til we own and agree on what the changes should be and how to accomplish them, until then just more of the same.

And honestly, while I'm on my soapbox, I couldn't imagine working for CMS and trying to figure out how to stretch the budget. Where the heck would you start and how would you decide what and how to regulate?

Specializes in Cardiac, Transplant, Intermediate Care.

Maybe because nursing is hard? From trying to get the instructors to teach you about the job to trying to get preceptors to teach you about the job. Then, when you are actually doing the job, facing all the obstacles that may occur; get to work, figure out patient assignments- oh, but I can't take this patient, and this one has that going on and I am not comfortable caring for him. Then we are faced with support staff who may or may not do their jobs- if not, that means you are doing your job PLUS theirs, which may set you back a lot. Add on top of that trouble with meds and pharmacy maybe getting them to you, maybe the doctors ordering things correctly, and maybe not. You may have a situation where you need assistance from co-workers, and finding one who isn't; hiding somewhere on the floor, busy talking about their vacation/child/latest illness and further uninteresting drama. I could go on. Nursing is sort of a game- to see who knows their job, does their job and tries to get out of doing their job. That's my experience anyway. I love the patients, but co-workers are another story.

i don't blame the insurance industry for this. This has all come about because of what we as a country want, demand, ignore and are willing to contribute to our healthcare, much of it out of selfishness or denial whether we work for a pharmaceutical company, don't take enough responsibility for prevention, concerned with only getting ours, choose longevity over function, our own stock portfolios..

But we can't change til we own and agree on what the changes should be and how to accomplish them, until then just more of the same.

And honestly, while I'm on my soapbox, I couldn't imagine working for CMS and trying to figure out how to stretch the budget. Where the heck would you start and how would you decide what and how to regulate?

It all starts in Washington & flows downhill from there, to the insurance companies. The government dictates the financial structure that insurance companies institute as well. CMS is where the "patient survey" reimbursement comes from. "Quality Measures", "Meaningful Use" and "HEDIS" are all CMS regulations. Whatever the big money donators want, Washington gives them. Take a look at the major financial contributors toward our representatives in Washington, and you'll find that a large number of them are companies involved in healthcare in some way----big pharmaceutical companies, medical device corporations, insurance companies. The decisions made in Washington are going to be based on what those entities want, not what nurses want. The AMA used to have influence in government; not anymore. Healthcare has become a for-profit business, which is the #1 problem. Medications prices have gone up something like 500% over the last 10 years. Insurance costs have gone up something like 350%. Do you know what hasn't gone up like that? Nursing salaries. And nurses are the ones whose salaries should have gone up 500%. But nursing associations do not have any political influence in Washington. The nursing associations talk about their PACs, and how they lobby in Washington----bullsh**. Don't waste the time or money on it because it doesn't matter.

What kind of make some laugh is how nursing departments treat the hiring process as if they are hiring senior VP level staff---two and even three interviews, a drawn out process, entry level BSN degrees, blah blah blah. Then the nurses are hired and treated like service workers in hotels,with patient satisfaction surveys being the priority, and of course documentation so if the hospital is sued, the documentation is good enough to support a defense. They don't give a hoot about the staffing levels & refuse to acknowledge the fact that lower nurse:patient ratios result in safer & better care. They'd rather the nurses take dangerous numbers of patients and HOPE nothing bad happens. Then when it does, the hospital's legal department gets involved, Quality Improvement gets involved, administration gets involved to "discuss" the reasons "why" the incident occurred. However, the elephant in the room is selectively ignored----the fact that the nurses have unsafe numbers of patients to take care of. They'll come up with all kinds of new policies & procedures based on the incident, but the staffing levels won't change. It is nothing but a cruel joke.

I know what nursing used to be like because I WAS THERE. I know what it is like to enjoy going to work, to genuinely like your co-workers, to work in a cohesive unit where everybody has each other's back, where the staff was valued & appreciated, where we all worked together as a team. Every job has its bad apples, but I know what it's like to work where those apples are few and far between. I've seen the healthcare industry fall apart over the last 28 years. Nurses didn't used to be on par with flight attendants & restaurant servers. We used to be seen & treated as professionals. The hiring process was not a long, drawn out, ridiculous process----you used to be able to walk into the hospital's Nurse Recruitment office, fill out an application, have an interview and be hired at the interview or get a call the day after with a job offer. My first job when I graduated from college was at a major NYC hospital---I had a telephone interview and was hired over the phone 2 months before graduation. I didn't have to go for 2 or 3 interviews and try to impress anyone. I was told what date to go to employee health for a physical and what my start date would be. Everything has become so difficult---online applications where you don't even know if your application is getting to who is needs to go to, waiting for a phone call, never getting any response whatsoever. There is no actual person to talk to. I think that kind of atmosphere has created the back-biting among the nursing staff. There is a superiority complex that exists, and nurses want to find themselves somewhere on the upward ladder, so they will insult & degrade the other nurses. That makes the job worse than it already is. But that's another story.

It all starts in Washington & flows downhill from there, to the insurance companies. The government dictates the financial structure that insurance companies institute as well. CMS is where the "patient survey" reimbursement comes from. "Quality Measures", "Meaningful Use" and "HEDIS" are all CMS regulations. Whatever the big money donators want, Washington gives them. Take a look at the major financial contributors toward our representatives in Washington, and you'll find that a large number of them are companies involved in healthcare in some way----big pharmaceutical companies, medical device corporations, insurance companies. The decisions made in Washington are going to be based on what those entities want, not what nurses want. The AMA used to have influence in government; not anymore. Healthcare has become a for-profit business, which is the #1 problem. Medications prices have gone up something like 500% over the last 10 years. Insurance costs have gone up something like 350%. Do you know what hasn't gone up like that? Nursing salaries. And nurses are the ones whose salaries should have gone up 500%. But nursing associations do not have any political influence in Washington. The nursing associations talk about their PACs, and how they lobby in Washington----bullsh**. Don't waste the time or money on it because it doesn't matter.

What kind of make some laugh is how nursing departments treat the hiring process as if they are hiring senior VP level staff---two and even three interviews, a drawn out process, entry level BSN degrees, blah blah blah. Then the nurses are hired and treated like service workers in hotels,with patient satisfaction surveys being the priority, and of course documentation so if the hospital is sued, the documentation is good enough to support a defense. They don't give a hoot about the staffing levels & refuse to acknowledge the fact that lower nurse:patient ratios result in safer & better care. They'd rather the nurses take dangerous numbers of patients and HOPE nothing bad happens. Then when it does, the hospital's legal department gets involved, Quality Improvement gets involved, administration gets involved to "discuss" the reasons "why" the incident occurred. However, the elephant in the room is selectively ignored----the fact that the nurses have unsafe numbers of patients to take care of. They'll come up with all kinds of new policies & procedures based on the incident, but the staffing levels won't change. It is nothing but a cruel joke.

I know what nursing used to be like because I WAS THERE. I know what it is like to enjoy going to work, to genuinely like your co-workers, to work in a cohesive unit where everybody has each other's back, where the staff was valued & appreciated, where we all worked together as a team. Every job has its bad apples, but I know what it's like to work where those apples are few and far between. I've seen the healthcare industry fall apart over the last 28 years. Nurses didn't used to be on par with flight attendants & restaurant servers. We used to be seen & treated as professionals. The hiring process was not a long, drawn out, ridiculous process----you used to be able to walk into the hospital's Nurse Recruitment office, fill out an application, have an interview and be hired at the interview or get a call the day after with a job offer. My first job when I graduated from college was at a major NYC hospital---I had a telephone interview and was hired over the phone 2 months before graduation. I didn't have to go for 2 or 3 interviews and try to impress anyone. I was told what date to go to employee health for a physical and what my start date would be. Everything has become so difficult---online applications where you don't even know if your application is getting to who is needs to go to, waiting for a phone call, never getting any response whatsoever. There is no actual person to talk to. I think that kind of atmosphere has created the back-biting among the nursing staff. There is a superiority complex that exists, and nurses want to find themselves somewhere on the upward ladder, so they will insult & degrade the other nurses. That makes the job worse than it already is. But that's another story.

I know what nursing looked like 29 years ago myself. But my point is, who put whom in Washington?

This whole thing is by our design, one way or another.

I still like going to work. Maybe I'm a half glass full type, or maybe I just haven't been hit by it personally, it's hard to say, but I'm much more satisfied in my work now than I was 29 years ago.

I do miss having geriatrics dealing with age related issues making up the majority of our patients versus so many younger ones with lifestyle related conditions. Again that is the society we live in.

I know what nursing looked like 29 years ago myself. But my point is, who put whom in Washington?

This whole thing is by our design, one way or another.

I still like going to work. Maybe I'm a half glass full type, or maybe I just haven't been hit by it personally, it's hard to say, but I'm much more satisfied in my work now than I was 29 years ago.

I do miss having geriatrics dealing with age related issues making up the majority of our patients versus so many younger ones with lifestyle related conditions. Again that is the society we live in.

It is interesting that you say you miss the geriatric patients. That is one of the big topics surrounding the ACA---that the elderly are being swept under the rug & pushed to the side, not receiving the care that they should be receiving because Medicare doesn't want to pay for it. Do you think that is the reason why you are seeing far less geriatric patients?

You're right about who put the reps in Washington, though. I don't want to get into a political discussion (because those never end well, lol), but one thing I will say is that our choices are generally not great. I find I am standing in the voting booth, trying to pick the lesser of 2 evils, and hoping I pick the ones that will do the least damage to our country.

I'm glad to know there is one nurse out there that is satisfied. I think you're the first one I've found.

It's not that nursing itself is so bad, it's all the other (for a lack of better word) crap. The chronic short staffing, the conflicting work ethics of care team members, being treated like second class citizens, constant tedious tasks piled onto an already overwhelming workload, etc. The actual caring for the patient part can be quite rewarding when all the other..crap..doesn't get in the way.

Specializes in Med nurse in med-surg., float, HH, and PDN.

I was a nurse for 40+ years. I let my license lapse almost 4 years ago. I now work as a PD CNA with elderly patients. The pay is crap, but the feeling of dread in going to work no longer exists.

Since I have walked out of the LTC warehouse production-line, I don't go home feeling badly or afraid about perpetually not being able to stay caught up with the redundant charting unless I work 2 hours over shift's end to make sure I've covered my butt.

I no longer have to deal with absurd ratios,or with an impossible number of meds scheduled for an impossible number of patients, while answering the phone (since Ward Clerks have been done away with) rounding with docs (because there is no longer a Charge nurse), running to the supply room to get supplies and portable O2 tanks (because the CNA's are 'not allowed' to go into the supply room), the constant faxes to and from labs and trying to track down the interns for a change in dosage of blood thinners; running back and forth from the med cart, and never being able to complete one task without being interrupted, dealing with family members, with terminal, dying patients, all the paperwork involved in admissions, discharges, transfers, and funeral homes picking up bodies, all the treatments, having to assist trying to help the aides with the unconscionable number of patients requiring being fed, and cajoling patients into taking their meds.

I got tired of wearing the too-many hats and being found wanting because I "could not manage my time well". I just can't do the jobs of half a dozen people all at the same time. That doesn't make me a bad nurse. The patients are the ones who lose out on the care they might have otherwise received had there been enough staffing to still have time to treat them as PEOPLE whose needs go beyond and in different directions than just tasks to be accomplished by a certain time or pills to be swallowed.

Now I have time for my patient, the PERSON who is my patient, to let them know that although they are old and out of the mainstream of life, they still matter, that they are not a bother; and I get to tend to their needs without being constantly called away.

Yes, when I started out in nursing in 1971, I LOVED working in the hospitals, challenging myself, learning new things, working as a team with a real variety of people who different but whom I enjoyed because of their differences. Oh sure, there were always a few malcontents; however, co-workers like that were not as prevalent, and generally, given time, we could work out a middle ground and get along and get what needed to be done with a minimum of fuss, minus the one-upsmanship or undercutting I see described here often.

Although there were older and/or more experienced nurses, and some were pleasant and easy going, and some were terse...well, that was just life. If they wanted me to do something differently, I learned what they wanted, what their expectations were, and then I either kept quiet and kept doing it my own way or made an amalgam of their way and my way. I never felt 'bullied' by older nurses, supervisors (there were no "managers" until 15 years after I started my life as a nurse.), or Docs. Yes, there were folks I steered clear of, just like there were the occasional patients I didn't care for or work particularly well with.

Like I said, I am much happier with my newer role doing private duty with elderly patients for whom I have time to do the care-giving I feel I have been destined to do.

Rachael,

In the words attributed to Sigmund Freud I offer this in the hope that it will emiliorate your unfortunate encounters with those whom have been less than kind..

"Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you were not, in fact, just surrounded by *******s."

On a lighter note...

"As a nurse, you come into contact with all kinds of bizarre and weird conditions on a daily basis. But just when you think you've seen it all, you're going to face a new challenge that your formal nursing training didn't prepare you for. In order to quickly and correctly identify underlying issues that are ailing your patients, you'll need to educate yourself on some of the weird conditions out there. There are hundreds of weird phobias that, among many other things, cause some of the nicest people to become so self-absorbed that they have no clue, at the moment, of the power of their thoughtless and inconsiderate comments ... "

The absolute worst outcome would be, of course, for you to withdraw from Nursing, thereby denying so many the sensitive, kind, gentle and compassionate comforts you would surely bring to them in perhaps their darkest hours.

Please don't take offense as I mean none what so ever (Nurses, to me, are Angels) when I say that you have many, many appreciative people you have yet to meet, WILL meet during your career. I am saddened that you seem to be meeting some seriously injured people at the beginning however you must understand that you have no power over what others say or do, your power lies in your reactions. The Dali has said "No one can hurt you without your permission"

If you browse some of the comments here you will discover some sincere and beautiful expressions of gratitude from Nurses' when speaking of the kindness' of some of their patients. Such are the people of your future so please turn away from bitter thoughts... the quality of YOUR thoughts will dictate the quality of the rest of your life...

Thank you for your service on behalf of those with disabling difficulties preventing them from expressing gratitude for the invaluable contributions made, daily, by hundreds of thousands of Nurses such as yourself.

It is interesting that you say you miss the geriatric patients. That is one of the big topics surrounding the ACA---that the elderly are being swept under the rug & pushed to the side, not receiving the care that they should be receiving because Medicare doesn't want to pay for it. Do you think that is the reason why you are seeing far less geriatric patients?

You're right about who put the reps in Washington, though. I don't want to get into a political discussion (because those never end well, lol), but one thing I will say is that our choices are generally not great. I find I am standing in the voting booth, trying to pick the lesser of 2 evils, and hoping I pick the ones that will do the least damage to our country.

I'm glad to know there is one nurse out there that is satisfied. I think you're the first one I've found.

It's not that they're swept under the rug, we still see them, it's that our country's health is in the tank with lifestyle related chronic illnesses hitting younger people and they are changing our census' demographics. The generation of my parents (80's-90's) lived differently than those hitting middle age now. And it's going to get worse before the hard lessons are learned. We as a society are tapping the entitlements long before we should. And if we look around, it's going to cross all socio-economic groups.

I know other satisfied nurses. I work with them. Not everyone really wants to work hard clear to retirement for whatever reason but they still like many aspects of the job (other than paperwork but that's nothing new).

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