I'm the insensitive husband. My wife is a nurse that works in the float pool. She spends a lot time working in behavioral health and the medical floors.
She has been working 3-4 16 hour shifts per 2 week pay period lately.
She feels that since she is working 16 hour shifts, and a nurse that I should be more appreciative.
I see things different than her. I wish I could 16 hour shifts and have more days off. I will 4 days off to her 8-9 days off per pay period. I work 80 hours per pay period and she works 60-70 hours. I wish I could do that.
She will also explain to me how hard nursing is. In my mind, that is what she enjoys and is good at. Most of her issues with being a nurse is dealing with other nurses. It has nothing to do with the work itself.
I basically came her to see if I could get a better understanding of how she feels. To hear from other nurses that have done the same thing and how their spouses were.
Please don't hold back. I want your real thoughts. If I mad you mad, then tell me.
Thanks to everyone that posted. I know that its a strange post. I was just curious if other nurses feel that working part time as a nurse is the same as a full time job. Sorry if I've made some of you upset. I posted this in favor of my wifes perspective. If I would havd posted in my favor then I wouldn't gotten point of views similar to mine.
I do want to say that I appeciate the work you do. It is a very thankless job, and nurses don't get the credit they deserve.
Do you have children? Is she the primary caretaker of the children? So she would have a Fulltime job of being a mother and Part time job as a nurse. I am guessing she is a mother otherwise why would someone willing work 16 hours in a row.
Also being a float nurse you always go to the busiest and most acute floors.
I find nursing to be exhausting mentally and physically. I spend at least 8 hours walking. I rarely get a chance to sit down. If the wing is full, I most likely forget to eat lunch. I've been bringing in lunch lately, which is nice. Otherwise I'm starving when I leave work. This is why I'm physically tired.
I work in LTC so I have up to 26 residents. I don't know if I can sum up what I do every day. I do talk to all the residents every day, as well as the staff at my facility, plus all the residents' providers and families. That's a ton of people. Every time I'm out in the hallway multiple people will ask me for something. There's tons of little details to remember along with all the other things I have to do.
My husband is very supportive. He listens to me vent about my job. He cooks when I am too tired (which is frequently) and he never complains. He'll stop at the store if we need something for supper. He won't clean or do extra stuff unless I ask him, but at least he'll do things if I ask. I think he just wants me to be happy and does whatever he can to help me be happy. It's easy being married to him and it's easy for me to reciprocate. Not like we have a perfect marriage, but I certainly can't say he's insensitive.
Don't compete with your wife and start listening to her is my advice.
So, your wife works 32 hours a week and crams that into two days.
Unless you're statistically deviant, she also does the marketing, cleaning, cooking, laundry, childcare, petcare, and is your social secretary. I don't know if you've ever tallied all that up, but it's basically 12 hours a day. Optimistically. So, she works 12 hours a day on her days off and 16 on her days at work. I'm exhausted just thinking about it.
The only way you are winning this competition is if you actually are statistically deviant and do half the work at home or you work three jobs.
I leave work and I think I hear alarms in my sleep- the alarm of an IV, the bed alarm (nothing will get your heart pumping faster than the bed alarm of a confused patient who is at the end of a long hallway), the alarm of the vital signs machine indicating low oxygen or low BP (or a BP that is way too high), the tele monitors going off because my patient's heart rate has dropped to 39 again...I could go on and on. I had a fellow nurse shocked I heard her patient's BP alarm, went to check on it, and then told her the BP had dropped again- we were sitting in the same area and she didn't hear it (I didn't know what patient it was originally- but I heard the alarm and went to investigate). I joke around with the other staff about hearing alarms in my sleep- but it's really not funny. It's stressful to always be on high alert.
We have visitors that think it's amazing how fast EVERYONE (nurses, aides, unit secretary, etc.) jump to their feet and race when a bed or chair alarm goes off. We've had people think it's funny. Sometimes patients, who know how to use the call bell, will set their alarm off just for $h!ts and giggles. It's not funny- we are on constant alert and it is so exhausting.
I've worked an office job before I went into nursing. I've worked 12+ hour days in a job that was mentally exhausting. Try working 12-16 hour days in a job that is mentally AND physically exhausting. Your body is beat. It can take a couple days to physically recover after a rough shift. It's even harder if you work back to back days with multiple bad shifts. I think I crawled into bed at 9pm last night and I didn't get up until noon today. I woke up at 8:45am and was like "well, guess I was too tired for that 8:30 class at the gym" and rolled back over to fall back to sleep. It's not that I like sleeping my day away- it's what my body needs. I've "wasted" 1 out of my 2 days off just recovering.
I go into work for every shift knowing I'll have coworkers I can count on. I know if I have a patient that declines AND I get an admission that's a heavy workload that the aides and other nurses on my unit have my back- that's exactly what has happened twice this past week. I wouldn't have made it through my shifts without them. They kept an eye on my patients, helped give my other patients due meds, sat with them, etc. while I couldn't. I've done the same and offered to do the same for them as well. I work on a wonderful unit with wonderful people. Your wife isn't blessed with that- I can't even imagine the stress of not knowing where you'll be (what unit, the patient type, etc.) and who your coworkers are.
My suggestion: if you think her job is so easy and her schedule so cushy, how about you quit your job, make it through nursing school, and become a nurse yourself!
edit: I'd also like to add that I move so fast while at work, that I've passed a mother and a teenage daughter (walking at a normal pace down the hall) several times in the span of just a minute or two, while just completing normal everyday tasks. I actually slowed down because they were in my way and before I could even say "excuse me" the mother had pulled her daughter (who was walking down the middle of the hall) out of the way for me.
I wonder often about the term "nursing is thankless," because I think it can sometimes lead to the types of conflicts that this man and his wife are dealing with right now. Nursing is a paid gig, just like any other, and it pays pretty well, comparatively. So that rules out the "thankless portion" really. It also involves a lot of physical and mental work. That's what you know going into it, and you still became a nurse. It's not fair to say that your job is more thankless or harder than other jobs. Like another commenter said above, comparison is the theft of joy. Also, something nobody else pointed out, a huge proportion of women, regardless of their career's difficulties, come home from work (40 or more hours a week) and do a lion's share of housework. Lots of people work 5 days a week and don't get to quit at 8 hours...AND they don't get paid overtime. Lots of people do physically trying work and come home exhausted. But nursing is the only field at which I hear superlatives such as "it's the most thankless job" and "3 12 hour days is harder than 5 8 hour days." It's simply not the way to be, and if you think it is, then you might not be working in the right field because you probably waste all your energy feeling resentful of people close to you who work in different fields.
Glad I'm not the only one. I feel like I have two full time jobs, and I don't even have kids. I'm responsible for every other "adult" task in our household. Not only do I work 40 hours a week, but I do all the laundry, cooking, cleaning, shopping, bill paying, pet care (my husband has not ONCE taken the animals to the vet), etc. I manage our 401ks, schedule all his appointments, fill out any paperwork - I feel like the list is endless. God forbid I don't want to do anything and be lazy.
I really do love my husband. He's great. He just grew up with his mom following him around and wiping his a** until he was 21 so he never really learned how to "adult." I'm the opposite. I was raised by a matriarch who taught me to be strong and independent so I've always taken charge of things.
He must be great. Great at watching you do everything for him.
OrganizedChaos, LVN
1 Article; 6,883 Posts
There are three sides to this story. His side, her side and the truth. We will never know.