If you feel that way, you shouldn't be a nurse

[perfexion]

Have you ever noticed that if a waiter or Walmart employee or grocery store clerk complains about their job, people take their side and agree that all their customers are jerks, but if a nurse (or a teacher, or a dentist or any professional really) complain about their job, people say they shouldn't be in their profession?

[OlivetheRN, ADN, BSN, RN]

Nurses aren't Angels; we're real people with real feelings. We have good days, bad days and in between days. When we have to deal with a nasty "customer", we're stuck with them for twelve hours. If a nurse needs to vent about the ignorant, ornery anal spinchter with whom she's spent the past 12 hours, I understand that completely.

However if the nurse never meets anyone who isn't an ignorant, nasty donkey then I think the problem is probably that nurse.

That right there is why after I became an RN I've worked in areas with high patient turn over. When I was a CNA on a medsurg floor prior to and during nursing school and had to deal with some nasty people for days and occasionally, weeks, and one particularly terrible excuse for a human for MONTHS on end, I knew I didn't want to have to do that for the rest of my career as an RN. I know the vast majority aren't like that, and there are a lot of patients I have now that I would like to hang on to all day, but then that one comes along that makes me so glad that I can send him or her on their way after an hour or so. Goodbye, don't let the door hit your tushy on the way out!