Hate my old jobs, hate my new one

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Specializes in ICU.

I had gone from LTAC and tele nursing back to ICU and it’s gotten so crazy I can’t even stand this job anymore. At my new job we use Epic and they’ve added so many damn flowheets and hourly things to chart on and keep up with that I spend hours charting. Someone in charge decided every single damn ventilated patient has to be on airborne precautions no matter what so I’m donning and doffing full basic PPE for every patient and it’s time consuming. Then for the sedation drips one of their doctors has come up with this formula for increasing sedation in which you have to bolus dilaudid and versed three times before you can increase it in specified increments every 20 min so like my alcoholic patient yesterday- they wanted me to wean her to see if we could extubate- I spent all day weaning the drips and switching to precedex and then she became severely panicked. If I followed their protocol for precedex I’d be there forever standing there slowly titrating it up but it was shift change, we had our third code of the day going on in the unit, and I had to get my other patient to the floor so I could leave and go pick up my kids from daycare in another town at 8:15 at night. I should have been able to just turn back on the verses and dilaudid and get her settled but that would be too time consuming with boluses. I ended up putting the precedex to max dose and scoring a CIWA for Ativan and calling it a day. 
 

Also, when did we become trash collectors??? I spend the end of my shifts not only dumping the foleys but also emptying all the trash cans in and outside of the room (four of them per patient) and putting new bags in the cans. That crap seems to have started with covid because the usual EVS can’t keep up with all the PPE being thrown away. I’m supposed to refill all the PPE too.

 

Then there’s the ridiculous joint commission crap like no finger sticks or alcohol wipes or ANYTHING at bedside when we are having to do all this stupid PPE stuff and so you can’t move freely in and out so I’m having to stuff all the things I might need in my pockets. Oh, but get this! Now we can’t store the alcohol and gauze with the glucometers either because it doesn’t have an expiration date so I’m supposed to go to multiple places to gather these constantly used supplies. 
 

im feeling it physically. The lack of time to do all that’s required. My stress was through the roof yesterday and I didn’t get to sit down and eat or drink or pee until 5pm. When did it get so demanding and physically difficult? I mean it’s just about at the point where they've over regulated so much that there’s just not enough time in a shift to get all the crap done. I’m only 44 and still have many more years to work myself to death and that’s exactly why I’m doing. My body is just in pain. 
 

I had to vent.

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Specializes in CEN.

It sounds like you don't actually hate your job; it's the hospital protocols that are stressing you out. It's not hard to see why. Just about everything you described is completely ridiculous! I've honestly never heard of so many rules in a hospital...

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Specializes in school nurse.
4 hours ago, evastone said:

It sounds like you don't actually hate your job; it's the hospital protocols that are stressing you out. It's not hard to see why. Just about everything you described is completely ridiculous! I've honestly never heard of so many rules in a hospital...

Don't worry. The Joint Commission will come in to evaluate and then lay out a course of common-sense and reasonable fixes to the situation.

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The solution is ... get out of hospital nursing. Do your research , use the job boards.

Good luck.

 

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Ugh, it upsets me just reading this. I loved it for such a long time, and then it was like we'd all been herded onto a downhill speeding train going off the tracks with the exact kind of stuff you mention. What's worse--what made it insufferable IMO--was that when people became even minimally fatigued or did something like ask a question...the anger and backlash, the gaslighting, the abject refusal to be reasonable was impressive. So...??‍♀️...Just no.

7 hours ago, Been there,done that said:

The solution is ... get out of hospital nursing.

Truth right here, AFAIC. ?

Don't mess up your life trying to hang on.

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