Have you ever been looked down on because you don’t work in the hospital?

[happyhippo]

For those working in outpatient primary care offices, have you ever being looked down because you don’t work in the hospital? 

Background: I have been a nurse in a level 1 trauma center stroke/neuro unit for almost 2 years now. I never knew what it was like working as a nurse before the pandemic but I can tell you that I am burnt out.

I love being a nurse but...

I feel more and more burnt out and underappreciated every day.

I question about being a nurse more often than I should. 

I dread going to work everyday.

I feel extreme anxiety before work and it interferes with my sleep, my mood, and just my overall wellbeing.

I get cranky with my family.

I tried to work on my hobbies outside of work like painting and etc but none really helped with my anxiety.

I just feel extremely trapped. It took me a while to finally decide to leave the hospital and move to outpatient.

I got hired as an outpatient primary care nurse but the office is a mix of concussion clinic and acute care walk-in. After I got hired, I feel like I dropped a big weight from my shoulder. I could finally think positive about my future and my nursing career. I really believe that moving away from the hospital helps tremendously with my mental health.

When I broke the news to my coworkers, some of them seemed to talk down on nurses who work in outpatient clinics, especially those with years and years of experience. For example, they would say something like "you're going to get so bored", "what do you even do there? Just vitals?", "you're not going to learn much."

I also have plan to go back to school part time to become an FNP. And my coworkers said, "you're going to make clinical decisions, the hospital is better environment to learn." They gave me the look like I’m weak and I will not be a good NP. 

All these comments about being an outpatient primary care nurse kinda made me feel like I'm not enough to become an FNP and I won’t be a good one because I don’t have enough hospital experience. Do you ever experience the something similar? 

[OutlandishRN2, BSN, RN]

It’s entirely possible but what I’ve come to appreciate is that I don’t care much about what other people (and on occasion other nurses) think. To explain, I worked in critical care settings for seven years (ICU and PACU) prior to leaving the hospital setting and picking up with hospice. I truly loved critical care nursing but my last three years left me feeling burnt out, dejected and sickened. Not so much by nursing but the ugliness that pervaded my unit. I wish I’d left sooner!! I absolutely LOVE where I am now…the company, the management and my coworkers. I work just as hard, if not harder than I did in the hospital and it’s more challenging because you don’t have everything right at your fingertips. But I have autonomy and what I do feels rewarding for the first time in years. If someone feels the need to degrade that because I’m not working in a hospital, that says way more about them than it does about where and what I’m doing! 
Change can be hard but it can also be a very good thing. Wishing you the best. 

[JKL33]

I remember once questioning a coworker who was leaving the ED for outpatient. She had several years' ED experience on me and was one of the best nurses I've worked with, so I was disappointed that she was leaving. I was also naïve enough that I truly didn't understand why a smart and skilled nurse would want to make that kind of move. So I said something along the lines, "Do you think you will like that? Don't you think you'll miss the ED?" She was a very kind person (and quietly confident) so she just smiled in a knowing sort of way and said, "Nah, it'll be okay."

And now that I have left the hospital I am pretty sure I know what she was thinking/feeling. When it's time to move on from the hospital (or for some people, choosing a different path altogether from the outset), it is more than okay. I haven't missed the hospital for one single second. I'm thankful for all that I learned and the experience I gained, but I'm pretty sure I would leave nursing rather than go back to the hospital if those were my only two choices.

If anyone pities me for no longer being a real/important kind of nurse, I wouldn't know. And if I did become aware of their opinion I would just think that they are as naive as I once was. There's a whole other world out there and it isn't worse. In my opinion it is so much better that I'm still in sort of a state of disbelief about it.

That ^ is the nicer of my two thoughts about the matter.

My not-nicer thought is: If one works in a hospital, is it even possible to look down (on anyone else)? At the time I left there was nowhere to look but up. In my humble opinion of course.

 

[RatherBHiking, BSN, RN]

I’m a school nurse and have been asked more than once if I want to be a real nurse some day.

I was also told by a principal once that this parent (who yelled at me because I didn’t send her kid home even though I did call her and left a message and she never called back and the kid said they were fine to make it the rest of the day) is a pediatric nurse and I needed to listen to her. I was so mad. I’m like what the heck do you think I am??  

Then I went back to the hospital for a year and was asked many times why I would leave such a cushy job. At the time it was part time and I needed the money.

It didn’t seem to matter what I did someone always had criticism! I never asked teachers why they weren’t a principal or a family doctor why they weren’t a neurosurgeon but for some reason we get judged no matter what we do! 

[FashionablyL8, CNA, LPN]

Other people's opinions are on them and tend to have more to do with their feelings about themselves than anything else. Your happiness is what is important to you. If your quality of life is better now that you are out of the hospital environment, that's what counts.

I am an LPN working in SNF/LTC so I'm sure there are people who would look down on me and think I'm not a "real" nurse, but I love it. I live to please myself and work to support myself and my family, not to fulfill other people's visions of what I should be ?. 

Do what is right for you and I'm sure you will be successful. 

[T-Bird78]

On 3/5/2022 at 2:21 PM, PoodleBreath said:

I just read yet another article about the toll of the pandemic on healthcare workers that centered on the idea that nurses only work in hospitals. It's frustrating and depressing to feel so invisible. The toll of the pandemic has been intense in my field - first because of the corporatization of healthcare - and then of course diminishing resources, no PPE, decreasing support, vanishing staff, working alone, and of course being mired in this tragedy in the homes of dying patients and having to navigate the pain of the entire family, which is complicated as all get out - sometimes for hours at a time alone. 

Not to mention staff in SNFs, ALFs, memory care, who have years-long relationships with their patients. I have gone in to take care of hospice patients and seen staff weeping, alone, struggling at half-capacity to care for 20-40 severely ill patients, many who feel like family to them. 

Healthcare workers in outpatient settings, communities and schools also have those long term relationships with patients and are just as invested in their well-being, learning their secrets and fears, and feeling incredibly invested in protecting them. With the same lack of resources and support as anywhere else. And since the pandemic, having to face some very highly agitated patients while alone in a room with them. And no recognition. My first job was in a clinic and I couldn't hack it, it's hard work.

There's no question that the conditions in hospitals are brutal. But healthcare doesn't start and end in the hospital. It starts and ends in homes, in clinics and schools and then hopefully leads patients back out again into their homes and community. I wish there was a way to bring more support to those of us working outside of the spotlight. 

Ah, the diminished PPE and supplies. I remember each office in my healthcare system being allocated ONE tub of disinfectant wipes at a time. ONE.  My location alone has 8 exam rooms, 2 procedure rooms, two clean/dirty/processing rooms, 2 specialized testing rooms, plus the break room and waiting room. Hospitals got priority, of course as they should, but it got to the point that when we used the last wipe from the tub, we’d stuff paper towels in the container to soak up the remaining liquid just to get every drop of that liquid gold disinfectant that we could. 

[Sandra Elanges, ADN, BSN, DNP]

After reading some of these comments, I think my experience is a little different. I left the hospital and my colleagues expressed wanting to come work in public health with me. Prior to the pandemic, I worked all over the county my health department covers, which included all of the hospitals at different points in time, if there was a patient I had to make contact with. I do not miss anything about working in the hospital, especially with what has transpired in our healthcare system over the last two years. 

[HiddenAngels]

tell them to shut up and go bake bread?