In LTC as a float RN

[myviefolle07]

I don't like Nursing homes. Worked in 2.. Heard from nurses here.. Well 70-80% are not happy with the care we provide! My license is 1 year old & while I took that oath I promised to be the best nurse that I could! Sadly, this is not the case! Hospitals don't want me because I only have ADN and 8months of experience at Nursing homes. I was bright as a student nurse. Was taught the best to be the best! And then the reality hit me. I am depressed to the point I want to leave nursing profession. I have been working every shift Am, PM & NOCs in the past one month! My body clock is messed up. I barely get 4 hrs of sleep each night. My work is 100 miles away (each day). I get about 30 patients. Each day.. I repeat EACH DAY I work I find an error in the MAR! And I am not even talking about OTCs, eye drops etc. I am talking Narcotics. If I send out a patient to ER because she is "lethargic" & just doesn't look right, I am looked down upon by the DON/ supervisor! He commented -" it is You right? You are jinxed one".. He made this comment while my patient was seizing (generalized) & the family was crying hysterically in the same room. Of course my DON was just kidding because I could see him laughing while pointing at me! IT WAS EMBARASSING! I am enrolling in online BSN soon and I will be quitting this job because it is so stressful. We switched to online MARs recently so med pass is timed. I have 30 residents and I am a float nurse. It takes me a while to "look" thoroughly at the MAR but I am expected to get it done in 2 hrs with not only families, doctors, labs, physical therapists but also a few Psych- Patients hovering around. In hospitals where I was trained, NO ONE was allowed to distract the nurse doing med pass (except in emergencies)! Also did I mention we are not allowed Overtime. So nurses- both new and old clock out and finish their work! This is California. There is no nurse union. If you decide to not clock out, you get yelled at. The whole environment is TOXIC & discouraging! They have 80% employees of the SAME RACE! Where is equality. My 50% alert & oriented residents complain that they cannot make a nurse aware of their needs because "nurses don't know English here".. DON is from the same country as well so she is biased towards them while others are laughed at! I have seen it happen to a new grad, very sweet Japanese nurse. She was mocked at when she called the facility! How comforting is it to know that your co-workers make fun of nurses who are not of the same race as you are? Please do it but in the privacy of break rooms etc. My supervisors have refused to help me stating - "oh I am busy with admissions or da da da".. There are SO many issues here that I pray to lord everyday for not putting me in a situation where my license is jeopardized! I am SCARED to go to work! It's 1 am now and I will try to catch a couple of hours of sleep before I go to the circus again! I am just venting! I am sorry! I may have not "written" it professionally for all you "experienced" nurses but this is what I AM going through & this is how I am putting it! Thanks for reading! Good morning & good night :)

[Nurse_Wretched]

The patients in LTC are being taken advantage of... Facilities repeatedly understaff and try to gloss over it when the families are around. They aren't fooling anyone. They like to try to guilt you into believing that: 1) You are the only one who has to stay after to get your charting done 2) You are the only one who is late with giving meds 3) You are a bad nurse because you forgot to give a calcium. LTC is, at best, somewhat tolerable. At worst, it is a nightmare and a liability... I adore the elderly patients and this system screws them over every chance it gets! It makes me sad because I judge our healthcare system by how it treats its most vulnerable consumers...