How many new nurses are seriously thinking about quiting?

sunshineyday · Sep 10, 2008

I'm in a "graduate assistance program". We started out with 38 new grads at the end of June. I just got the October 1 class roster and it is 22. I agree that clinicals don't prepare the student nurse for real life. I wish I had gotten my ADN instead of BSN so I wouldn't have wasted two years of my life.

rockexrolloh · Sep 10, 2008

Well, since someone already revived this thread, I'll go ahead and say that you guys really know how to turn off a nursing student. Hah. I am now terrified and second guessing my career choices. Thank you.

WindyhillBSN · Sep 10, 2008

Yes I've thought about it. I'm still in orientation, I was just told today since I've been here 4 weeks already, I should be able to handle high acuity pts. at least 5. I almost ran for the elevator.

WDWpixieRN, RN · Sep 10, 2008

I don't know that I am near considering quitting, but I will seriously say that no way does school anywhere NEAR resemble real-life on the floor. The documentation, checking dr. orders, coordinating with other departments, keeping up with 5+ pts EVERYDAY, etc., are nowhere near the fairytale world of 2 or 3 pts for 4 hours with an instructor watching your back.

Only 2 months in to this and I laugh to think what a joke school clinicals were compared to this. Even the last few weeks of our school's preceptorship was nothing like this.

That all being said, I don't mind most of the work so far. It's just mindnumbing how much there is to remember and catch on to -- paperwork, misc. documentation, admits, discharges, the BS stuff to stay JCHAO certified and keep your mgt. happy. It's just a LOT to absorb in a very short period of time.

I can see now where having a tech/secretary position in a hospital while in school and then hiring on there as a new grad would be hugely advantageous. One would have a lot of the minutae of the job down which would ease the transition GREATLY.

Don't be discouraged....just be prepared to be overwhelmed like CRAZY!!

love-d-OR · Sep 10, 2008

Someone mentioned that the reason why a lot of new nurses quit is because nursing school is far from being close to real life nursing. That nursing school does not prepare you for what's out there, I respectfully disagree. I think many people quit because they know they have a high chance of getting another job quickly. The shortage has caused an overflow of jobs, causing people to be sometimes too picky.

Alhough nursing school was not exactly the same as the real world, it came close enough for me. Compared to many other jobs, I think nursing probably gives you as much exposure to the real job as it can. Take for instance law school, the students do not have a preceptorship that exposes them to the work environment. They don't even have an equivalent to clinical. Granted they are encouraged to do a summer intership, they are stuck working as law clerks not as student lawyers. Once they graduate they are stuck with reality. Do many of them hate it at first? Oh yeah. Where they expecting to be stuck behind a desk most of the day instead of playing lawyer in a court room like the characters in law and order, oh no!

My point is, sometimes you just have to go with the flow of things. Give yourself a year before you seriously consider quitting a job, unless you are being abused (in any form) or are loosing your mind over it. Sometimes when we have too many options, we forget what it means to endure and be patient. The first semester/quarter of nursing school was though, right? (I know it was for me) but we did not quit. Why? One we really wanted to be nurses, two, we knew if we did we would loose a spot in a compacted program

You will never have 100% job satisfaction, life is not perfect and neither are jobs. My heart is with those that dread going to work every day, but try to rememeber why you joined the profession. If it is the patients, then try to focus on that and shut off the negativity from co-workers (if that's what irks you). If it was for the money, then remind yourslelf how satifactory it will be to splurge your next paycheck!

Just my :twocents:

By the way, I'm loving my job! Not even close to thinking about quitting...

nurseinlimbo · Sep 10, 2008

Just discussing this very topic tonight with another nurse who has been "in" as long as I have, 5 years. We both agreed we would never do it again. She has her degree, says she was brainwashed into believing she'd need it. I have my diploma and we work the same job for the same wages.

I am still stuck with a permanent night shift rotation, and repeatedly get turned down at my better job even though I have seniority in hours over others. Light at the end of tunnel though, I have an OR job in another city 4 hrs away, but have to wait for my house to sell before I can go.

I feel for those entering school, make sure you really want to do this, because if you are thinking it will be flexible, good money, a respected profession etc. RUN!!!!

surferbettycrocker · Sep 10, 2008

is there really a nursing shortage? or are most floors in hospitals unwilling to pay for increased staff, therefore making nurses 'work short' because of a 'shortage'....

that may begin to explain why there are still so many nursing jobs on paper, and so many new grads still being churned out of school.

being a 'newbie nurse' when i go to work i feel more like part of the problem than the solution. if we continue to show up and hurt ourselves physically and mentally at work, well hey at least the floors have somewhat of a staffing ratio.

sure i wanted to go into nursing for the people aspect of it, but what about when you work with people who sneak drugs and alcohol into the hospital? or verbally threaten you or actually physically threaten you?

believe me, i had my eyes opened to nursing long before i decided to take the plunge, but now that i have, i regret it. as long as i show up to work every shift b/c i do not want to let my coworkers down, i am in effect, saying it is OK to have us work so short and w/o help! :down: now what?

Hoosiernurse, ADN, RN · Sep 11, 2008

So, seasoned nurses cry when confronted with a day of med-surg and yet we recommend it as place to start out? Certainly, if you make it, you'll probably do fine anywhere else, but isnt' that increasing the odds of newbies not making it all and giving up on nursing altogether? If an otherwise good nurse can succeed in ICU/PACU but struggles with med-surg, then why not have newbies start somewhere with less chaos than the typical med-surg floor?
It is normal for a new employee to not be able to manage a full workload competently for several months. On a med-surg floor though, who suffers for your slowness? The new nurse must go in each day for several months knowing that they won't be able to fulfill all of the work expectations, that they'll burdening their already overworked colleagues to pick up their slack, and that their patients are at greater risk since even experienced nurses barely make it through their hectic day and newbies certainly won't do any better.
If you've got great colleagues who are very helpful, that can take some pressure off of the newbie. But in many locations, it seems that the experienced nurses can barely manage their own workload and simply don't have the time to help the struggling newbie.

I was just browsing this thread, and I have to say WOW, this makes a lot of sense! It's exactly how I'm feeling, coming out of orientation in a couple of weeks on a med/surg solid organ transplant floor. It was SUPPOSED to be about transplants, but it's really just glorified med/surg with some antirejection meds tossed it. I started here because the hospital I planned to go to didn't have any med/surg jobs available. What I am really wanting to do is cardiac nursing...heart failure specifically. I need to go through a critical care program before they let me do that sort of job, and they said when I interviewed for my current position that it was "sort of like critical care, with slightly less acuity". Yeah, well, it's not. Anytime anyone gets ANYTHING cardiac-related wrong, they pack them up and shift them off the floor as fast as they can. I always think, as they are wheeling them away, "Man, they were just getting interesting to me!"

So do I stay in this position for another 4 months to make it to 6 months? Do I try it for a whole year and then go to a critical care program and a cardiac position? I really am not happy so far, but I didn't expect to really enjoy feeling so out of place and bumbling. Med/surg is the pits, for all the reason this original poster pointed out. I feel just like what this person is say.

There are days when I think life is too short and I should find something else, but how to explain to people that you only made it a few weeks on a med/surg floor? Don't you just look like you wouldn't be reliable at the new job? That you cave in pretty easily? I don't know. I don't want to be jumping ship too fast, but you just don't know what a job is about until you are in it, and I had NO previous nursing experience. I was a stay-at- home mom for 16 years!

Thanks for letting me vent...

Cara

Betterdays · Sep 12, 2008

Hello fellow new nurses, I have read all of your comments posted here and I feel for all of you. I totally understand what you're coping with as new nurses. I'm just barely over 2 years in nursing now. I've had three jobs, all in different settings, (I left the first two jobs on good terms, for better pay and work hours). I've spent the last 8 months in hell on a hospital med-surg floor. I wish I had had the guts to quit this job when I had the chance. I just figured that if I hung in there long enough and kept giving it the best I could, I would master it eventually. I was making great improvements and always getting positive feedback from my peers. Well, I guess it just "wasn't a good fit", (as I've heard repeated over and over again).

Well, fine. Now I have this stigma of being 'fired for incompetency' because the job "wasn't a good fit"! I am so depressed, defeated, and feel like such a failure. I know I'm a good nurse for the amount of experience I have and I'm competent when not constantly racing against the clock, under unbelieveable stress because we're short staffed all the time and there's not always time to critically think or ask questions.

The prospect of trying to explain to my next perspective employer why I was "let go" or "terminated" or "sent packing" (whatever you want to call it), terrifies me! I feel like I was chewed up and spit out! If I could afford to go back to school and do something else (perhaps a nursing specialty), I would but I have a family to support, a mortgage and bills to pay.

So, I'm left praying that some other employer will give me another chance to prove that I deserve the Nursing license they gave me...that I earned all those A's and passed all those skills tests in Nursing School...that I AM a competent RN...and that my last job really was just "a bad fit." Ugh! I'm so devestated right now!

Good luck to all of you. I heard it really does get rewarding once you "find that good fit." Take care.

WDWpixieRN, RN · Sep 12, 2008

So, I'm left praying that some other employer will give me another chance to prove that I deserve the Nursing license they gave me...that I earned all those A's and passed all those skills tests in Nursing School...that I AM a competent RN...and that my last job really was just "a bad fit." Ugh! I'm so devestated right now!
Good luck to all of you. I heard it really does get rewarding once you "find that good fit." Take care.

Bless you as you figure out your next step. This job just isn't easy no matter how you slice it. Rewarding sometimes? Challenging? Oh, yeah. Financially I'm not making NEAR what I made in my former IT job, but I'm hoping the part where I'm making a difference fill in for that void.

I'm hoping I can make my current position "fit". I started nights a few weeks ago and that seems easier to handle. Not quite so many balls to juggle and I think our facility is really trying to keep ratios down. I'm hoping that continues to be the case....

Good luck all!! :heartbeat

jjjoy, LPN · Sep 12, 2008

Hiya, Betterdays! This sounds like one of those times you need to keep reassuring yourself that you ARE competent and do a great job. For some reason, your performance didn't meet the needs/desires of that unit/manager.

With time and experience, you might be able to look back at this and figure out what "really" happened or how you might've done things differently. Or you might realize it was an impossible situation from the beginning.

So what to do now? First of all, resolve any questions you may have regarding the last job. Can they give you any specific feedback? Take it with a grain of salt as they aren't perfect either and their judgement of your performance may or may not be accurate. There may be other unspoken reasons for letting you go, but instead they trot out your mistakes to justify it. So listen and note what they tell you. It might be useful. It might not be.

Then go out and get more experience! You ARE qualified for it. Believe that when you go to interview. Believe it when you say it "just wasn't a good fit." It wasn't or else you'd still be there! At this point, you're being let go does NOT mean that you aren't a competent nurse. It means that you didn't work out in that role in that facility. If you end up being let go from several similar positions, THEN you'd do well to seriously evaluate your strengths, weaknesses and professional goals.

Do your best. Keep your patients safe. And after a few months at a new job, you might have a better idea of "what went wrong" here. Maybe you did need to improve on certain skills. Maybe not.

Good luck!

TERILPN2RN2B · Sep 12, 2008

well I must say...that I just started new job on the med surg floor. I think it's a great job...can be overwhelming at times ..but the nurse's i work w/ are great....always there for a helping hand..then there's a resource nurse who is available to help out also..This is my 6th week of orientation and i'm taking 4 pts already . With my preceptor there watching me and helping out.My pt load can be up to 6 pts...so i think that med surg it's that bad and it's great for the experience...u can work any where after med surg...