I'm in my fourth semester of nursing school going for my BSN. I'm a 22 yr old male. I've been working in the hospital as a CNA night shift for 6 months now. I can honestly say I hate my job. I get sad on the days that I have to go to work. I feel like a part of me as a person is being taken away whenever I go to work. I hate the way the hospital looks, and when i'm inside a patient's room getting vitals; I get depressed when i look out the windows at the mountains seeing the sun set and my day is basically gone. The other day i was sitting for a patient who was elderly and confused post surgery. I decided to take him to a big window outside his room on the unit and look at the clouds and mountains. He said Wow! And did'nt want to go back to his room, luckily his medicine wasn't ready and I didn't want to go back in there either. We stayed starring out the window for and hour. I felt connected with him more than a simple "can i get your vital signs" type employee. I felt like i could get away mentally, but the days when i'm at the nursing station or running from room to room just completing tasks, I think about the world outside the hospital and the laughter, people walking through the malls, parks, friends sitting at the dinner tables catching up, or even a slow paced office job sitting by a window answering phone calls looking a glittering lights in the distance. With most patients im too focused and busy to get to know them and I lose touch or maybe never grasp it in the first place. Some patients like the elderly guy above i'm able to talk to and feel some type of empathy for their current state of being despite all their years of hard work and relationships lost. I also fear if I will too end up in their condition or similar once I am old. Sick, lonely, weak, tired, unheard, dependent. When i'm working my twelve hour shifts I find myself lost and functioning as a robot by midshift and sometimes I turn on music to bring me together. Then i look at the nurses and see them running around sweating like me, constantly worried about everything and I worry about my health and stress level in the future. I get tired of feeling this way.
My hate for my job has began to spill over into my enthusiasm for nursing and nursing school. I am still passing, but I just do not have an interest and the mere fact of just finishing nursing school has become a "task" to complete because i've invested so much time thus far. I wonder about other occupations like accounting, teaching, singing, etc. BUT when im spending a little "me time" i like to read about diseases, medications and their mechanisms of actions. When i am being taught to tell a patient to avoid grapefruit juice or green leafy veggies i'm usually sitting in classed bored and feel like it's a joke. I hate how i'm being taught more about nursing implications than the disease itself IT DRIVES ME INSANE because the implications aren't thought provoking enough. At least most of them. I feel like I just don't know enough about diseases and illnesses themself and to be honest thats all I truely like. I'm in debt with stafford loans so I have to finish my degree because I do not like to owe anyone. I'm so lost now and sometimes I feel like I may have made a mistake going for nursing but i like learning about diseases and treatments. My mom and friends say its normal to be depressed when you are almost done with NS. But i view it as false assurance because nobody feels my emotions. I get tired of feeling this way.
How bout school nurse, or home health or community health? Get a job where you can work only 8 hours, dr. office etc... I dont know but you spent so much time, energy and money into this degree, seems a shame to waste it just because its an inside job.
I agree with slave_driverRN, accounting is soul-sucking, dont go there.
How bout school nurse, or home health or community health? Get a job where you can work only 8 hours, dr. office etc... I dont know but you spent so much time, energy and money into this degree, seems a shame to waste it just because its an inside job.
I agree with slave_driverRN, accounting is soul-sucking, dont go there.
Unfortunately in my neck of the woods all of the nursing areas you mention (school, home health, community) require a minimum of 1 year med-surg (home health) and two years med -surg (community/school) to even be considered.
How bout school nurse, or home health or community health? Get a job where you can work only 8 hours, dr. office etc... I dont know but you spent so much time, energy and money into this degree, seems a shame to waste it just because its an inside job.
I agree with slave_driverRN, accounting is soul-sucking, dont go there.
Those jobs require taking a pay cut, ugh! You cant win for nothing these days.
Specializes in Critical Care, ED, Cath lab, CTPAC,Trauma.
Unfortunately in my neck of the woods all of the nursing areas you mention (school, home health, community) require a minimum of 1 year med-surg (home health) and two years med -surg (community/school) to even be considered.
True.....but just like in life.....you gotta kiss a lot of toads before you find your prince!!!!!
I get depressed when i look out the windows at the mountains seeing the sun set and my day is basically gone.... I think about the world outside the hospital and the laughter, people walking through the malls, parks, friends sitting at the dinner tables catching up
Me too. I like my days off. (btw, I'm guessing if you were actually AT an office job, you would feel the same way).
Work is work. But, as you found with your patient that you enjoyed the window view with, it can often be rewarding.
Remember to do all the things you want to do on your days off. And be outside.
I understand where you are coming from. My second year of nursing school, I cried more times than I can imagine leaving clinicals. Med/Surg was not for me. At all, and I knew it every day.
I went to work in the ER on graduation. I like it. I'm thinking about changing to pediatrics because I miss that family time and getting to know your patients more. But ER isn't as sad, loney, and depressing as med/surg days I dont think.
I know you are frustrated, but you should know that not only is every specialty different, every unit on every hospital is different. There is one med/surg unit in my hospital I wouldn't step foot on. It's TERRIBLE, nurses are overworked, most patients are total care. BUT, on the same floor just down the hall, the surgical unit is totally different. Patients are mostly able to take care of themselves, you get to spend more time with them, work with the docs, ect...
Also, you have to think that nursing is one of the few jobs you can only work 3 days and it's your work week. All those things you want to be doing outside? It's harder to fit that in with you are an accountant working 5 days a week.
Specializes in Hospice, ONC, Tele, Med Surg, Endo/Output.
I whole-heartedly understand what you said in your post. And it is great that you are honest with yourself and don't plan to stay in depressing hospital nursing. You are very smart for trying to find a way out of it so early in your career. Don't stay fifteen years like i did.
After about a year or so of working as a regular floor nurse you might consider applying for a hospice position. Believe me, it is a much easier job--as long as you have a med-surg and/or geriatric background; and you will not feel overwhelmed and bored if you do it ON CALL. You can get paid your hourly rate just to be available per diem, part time, or full time, and you will trouble shoot problems rather quickly then get the hell out of dodge. You will see zero to three patients per shift. You will get mileage compensation going to and from visits. It is the perfect job for someone who can't stand mundane, energy-sapping, mind-numbing hospital work; and watching fellow nurses spinning their wheels while getting little accomplished.
Bonus: you will spend most of your time in your car, in restaurants, bookstores-wherever you want, while you wait for a call to come in. You will rarely interface with unhappy coworkers and managers who try to make you think that nursing is rocket science; and only occasionally will you enter the main office to turn in incident reports or to attend the refreshingly rare on call inservice.
I usually start out my shift by having a meal in a nice restaurant, perusing thrift stores, and thumbing through books and magazines in bookstores. I also spend a lot of time at the home of a fellow nurse who has the same mind-set that i do when it comes to nursing work--we both hate it, except for the scientific part that you mentioned in your post. We chat, laugh, play with her dog, read, remodel her house, buy plants, watch sitcoms and movies, do puzzles, make jewelry, surf the internet...--all while waiting for the calls to come in.
Caveat: if you get talked into hospice case management, hospice admissions, or hospice pool you will be very busy and quickly feel trapped the entire day; and you will get frustrated, bored, and feel married to the 8 to 10 hour day routine; there will also be more annoying meetings, irritating phone calls from management to do this and do that--essentially your whole day will be sucked up with busy work. And you will be spending more time than you want to in the office. More politics and drama if you take on case management, pool, or admissions. I know because i foolishly did the case management and admit nurse thing at another hospice and was an evil witch. My current manager is well aware that i am not available for case management, pool, or admissions, though she repeatedly tries to lure me into those positions--can't blame her for trying.
Now i do on call hospice nursing, and this is after 15 years of gritting my teeth doing hospital nursing. My reward has finally come since i have a dream on call hospice job. It is great being alone most of the day, documenting visits in bookstores, in pt's homes or facilities; or in my car; taking breaks when i want to take them, having lunch when i want to have lunch. It doesn't get any better than this.
Those jobs require taking a pay cut, ugh! You cant win for nothing these days.
Seriously? Make a choice - do something you don't enjoy, or do something you enjoy and take the pay cut. Also: working as a CNA is not the same as working as a nurse; and almost every indoor job will have you working long hours without access to nature. Maybe you should look at landscaping or something...
Wow I've been a nurse for a long time but when I read your post I was suddenly overwhelmed with the memories I have from when I was a student nurse feeling very much the same as you've described. I think perhaps it's something to do with the reality shock of the world of hospitals and sick people and the way life goes on outside the hospital no matter what happens inside. You go home and your friends are just doing normal things and they don't understand that your heart has been broken in small or big ways most days. Maybe your heart hurts because there was an emergency with a patient and you didn't exactly know what to do and you felt useless or maybe it hurts because you knew that confused and scared elderly patient needed someone to sit with him for 10 or 15 minutes and you just didn't have the time or maybe it hurts because you weren't perfect at a skill or task, or even if you were, you start to wonder what good is all that knowledge when you realise that your patient isn't getting any better just because you know what's going on in their bodies.
Even if you're a really 'scientific' type, it hurts a part of you when you see others sick, tired, dependent, weak, lonely, unheard, all those things you mentioned, and you do start to feel lost and lonely yourself. You do look at the nurses running around worried and exhausted and the amount of responsibility you're letting yourself in for starts to weigh on you. And it does sometimes feel like it's all running from task to task without time to catch a breath and take a moment to really think about what you should be doing for this person.
The thing I'd say to you is that it does get better, it really does. In time you'll learn your own way of connecting with your patient when you go in to do the tasks and you'll learn how to start seeing the big picture and really use your knowledge. 'Nursing implications' are really just the things you need to know to keep the patient safe, they're not the only thing or even the main thing.
The fact that you even thought of taking that patient out of his room to sit and look at the mountains tells me that you're on the right track. The fact that you enjoyed doing it and were willing to sit there with him for an hour tells me more. We need nurses who look beyond the immediate physical needs and realise that the spirit or soul needs care just as much. So many patients are desperate for some human connection and understanding and it isn't always taking someone to sit and look at the view. Sometimes it's as simple as a smile or a soothing word, a gentle touch and a calm manner as you do those tasks you were talking about. It's things like looking in on someone when you said you would, sometimes it's having a joke with a patient, sometimes it's even telling them something about yourself, it's acting in a way that shows them they matter to you while you also do the things necessary to meet their physical needs, try to prevent things going wrong and intervene if they do.
This has turned into a long winded ramble but I think you should stick it out now and give yourself some time to see what happens when you start working as a nurse. I really think there's a chance it will get better. In the meantime, look after yourself, finish your degree, and maybe have some time off before you start looking for a job. Have a think about what you really want, but at least give it a try. And like others have said, if it turns out you hate it and you're not happy, well then it's time to think about what you're going to do next. Maybe hospital nursing will never be for you but there are many other areas to look into. Maybe it will mean doing something other than nursing, only time will tell. Wishing you all the best!
Praisemariahcarey, your post really resonates with me. I, too, love pathophysiology and pharmacology and the more cerebral aspects of nursing, but struggle with running from task to task in a windowless environment where my only clues to what's going on outside are through the ambulance bay doors, or by what my patients are wearing (flip flops or rain boots, long pants or shorts, etc.).
I went into nursing because I wanted to have a job in which I would always be learning, and if I started to stagnate, I could move into a different area and try something new. I wanted to do something that would make a difference in my community, and I wanted to earn a living wage.
Now, in my current job, I do feel like I'm learning, but it's blunted by the boredom of repetitious tasks. I sometimes feel like I'm making a difference, but most of the time I just feel like a glorified waitress. As far as a living wage, I only work part time because I can't stand the thought of working full time, and so I only make enough to pay the bills, and have no savings. But, I am lucky that I can work part time and still pay the bills. Most people have to work full time just to barely scrape by.
I am strongly considering returning to school and becoming an FNP. The idea of spending one on one time with my patients, where the focus isn't on blankets, sandwiches, and bedpans, but on helping them manage their health, might be a better fit for me. In the meantime, while I am in school, since I have to work to pay the bills, I'm considering home health or hospice. I want to get out of the hospital, be outside at least part of the day, and be free of the social stresses that working shoulder to shoulder with other nurses can sometimes provoke (this can make a tolerable day at work completely unbearable!).
Good luck to you in your endeavors. I agree with the others that you should complete your program and take the NCLEX. But by no means do you have to take a job on an inpatient hospital unit, especially if you know you will not like it. For instance, I would never take a position in an LTC facility, because even though I love the elderly and think they deserve the best care possible, I know that environment is not a good fit for me.
I am thinking that you may be better suited to be a pharmaceutical rep. You will be out and about in your car driving around to see different customers. I did this for many years before coming to nursing. It was a great fit for me at that stage of my life. However, you do need the BSN today to get that job. Back in my day one just needed a bachelors in marketing. Very different today.
taalyn_1, CNA
124 Posts
How bout school nurse, or home health or community health? Get a job where you can work only 8 hours, dr. office etc... I dont know but you spent so much time, energy and money into this degree, seems a shame to waste it just because its an inside job.
I agree with slave_driverRN, accounting is soul-sucking, dont go there.