I hate being a tech. will I hate being a nurse too?

[K nurse-one-day]

I dont need any judgement with this, b/c it truly is a deep concern. I am a 1st term nursing student, and a tech at a well known hospital in my town. I can say with all honesty that I hate my job. My floor is a small med-surg floor with only a handful of rooms, which isn't so bad, except all they do is float me. Its rare that I work on my floor more that 2 times a month. I get floated everywhere, including areas that I have not one ounce of training in. ICU is the bane of my existence. Ive never had any training in ICU and I get sent there all the time. The first time I floated there, I was so scared that I cried on the phone to my husband in the break room for 15 mins. I hate bathing people, Im so sick of cleaning up feces, Im tired of being bossed around and treated like a waitress, Im tired of pulling elderly people out of bed by myself to get them on the toilet and throwing my back out b/c no one will help me, spending 45 mins in one pt's room just to get them to the bathroom and back, getting run ragged every night...

I actually threw up in a pt's bathroom the other night b/c she sprayed diarrhea all over the toilet and I had to clean it up. Everytime I have to work I dread it the whole day, and I cry the whole drive there. It breaks my heart to have to leave my husband and kids to go to a job that I hate. My back hurts 24/7 and Im contently exhausted. Ive begged my manager to let me cut back my hours but she wont

So my question is this: If I hate being a tech, does that mean I will hate being a nurse? Im almost done with term one and Im just scared Im wasting my time and money.

[Versiongirl]

I applaud this message!

[Versiongirl]

I applaud this message!

I agree with everyone and then some, but I did want to mention that the nurses you work with would be raked over the coals if they worked with my current nursing crew, and how things are being run at your hospital are NOT acceptable in the least.

I was a CNA for about a year at a small hospital before I got my RN license. It was very apparent that some nurses felt that there was "nurse work", and then there was "tech work". Everything unappealing, of course, was "tech work". I've had nurses there leave their patient's rooms pretending they didn't notice the smells of dirty briefs! It was typical for a nurse to pass a med, then walk out of the room to tell the CNA, "Hey, patient so-and-so needs to use the commode", then sit down and play Bejeweled on a computer in the nurse's station.

I've moved on to a larger university hospital as a nurse, and every unit here promotes teamwork. On the floors, the nurses and CNA's work together to keep people clean. In the ICU, the nurses don't have CNA's, but if a fecal explosion is too much to take, it's okay to ask another nurse for help.

I think it's worth mentioning that it's normal to be disgusted by cleaning up patients when first starting out, and it WILL get easier to handle over time. I think most of your complaints are probably really about your lousy co-workers than the nursing tasks itself. I think if you worked someplace where the teamwork is great and everyone (CNA and RN staff) takes their turn dealing with unpleasantness, then you'd probably be much happier.

But most importantly: If you do decide to continue school and become a nurse, PLEASE remember how miserable you feel being the one doing the grunt work now, and don't stop basic nursing care after you're a nurse. Delegating everything gross to the CNA's will not get you any respect, especially if you get a job someplace like where I work. If you turn into one of the lazy nurses who made your CNA job awful, you're paying all that misery you feel forward, and in the end, you won't any better than THOSE nurses are.

[suanna]

This post brought something to mind. There are a vast number of "Nursing is an Difficult Profession-I wish I'd have known this sooner..." posts on AN. Why is is that when a person just entering the education for our profession discovers they don't care much for the type of work required for Nursing- the responses are >50% "hang in there it'll get better"? Haven't we hashed out, over-and-over, It dosen't get better- just the same or worse for many Nurses. Encouraging someone who has discovered they are not a person who enjoys Nursing to "keep at it" seems cruel. My advice- be thankful you found out Nursing isn't to your taste before you are saddled with hugh student loan debt, no job you don't despise, and credit hours that are so limited in thier application, you are stuck in Nursing in one form or another FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE. If you were accurate in how you are feeling in a Tech position- run to your schools guidance counselor and explore your other aptitudes and options. Thank God you found out now, before it was too late.

[Luv2bnrn]

I was a tech on a med/surg unit in a retirement community part of town and what you describe is what my job was like. I decided that it was really awful and got a job in an ER in another hospital. You still deal with some of the same stuff but not nearly as much. I learned a TON that is very very helpful to me now. I saw and learned so much there. We never floated because we were a self contained area. I did vital signs sometimes, toileting rarely, lots of EKGs, some splinting, wound care and dressings, visual accutiy, assisting with codes, worked in the trauma room maybe every other week. It was so much better.

As a nurse you still do the activities you describe but only with your patients. All of them (hopefully) will not be total care and they are YOUR patients, so its just part of giving them care they need.

I sit more now that I'm not a tech, as I am charting.

Find a new department.

Oh, and wait until you float as a nurse to care for post-op patients for some procedure you have never even heard of. It's much more stressful to float as a nurse. But, anyways, nursing school is hard enough, get a job where you will be happy and hopefully in an area where you will want to work when you get your RN. Being a tech in your department is a great foot in the door.

Good luck!