Is it to much to ask.....
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Is it to much to ask for a job that doesn't make you feel like you've been put through a ringer every time you go in? Why is it that nursing must be that way? When I get done with work I feel emotionally and physically spent and generally it takes me an entire day to recover from working 2 or 3 shifts in a row. The funny part is that it is not even patient care that I find so exhausting. Wiping up poop, handing out meds, changing sheets, checking the monitors and vital signs are not so bad. I don't like documenting just because I don't like paper work, but that isn't even really all that bad. What I find exhausting is doctors who put me down or ask me rehtorical questions like "So what do you want the pt's BP to be? I think it's fine at 90/50." Please don't be a smarty pants. Or dealing with charge nurses who yell at me and get very annoyed with the trillion questions I come to them with. Sorry, I'm new and I need help.
This all stems from my last day at work, which really hadn't been going to very badly until... I had a patient with a BP 240/96 so I called the physician who proceeded to yell at me over the phone that he had done all he was going to do for that pt's BP and I had better not call him again. Well I documented that, but I still felt nervous about my patient because her BP was so high. Then I got a 95 year old pt from cardiac cath lab who had a stent placed. She had a pressure dressing applied to the puncture site. I went in and checked her as I was suppose to. Pushed around the bandage, checked for a pulse, looked for bleeding, so on and so forth. Her BP prior to the procedure was 140s/80s, when she got to my floor it was 110s/60s and by the time the shift changed it was 90s/50s. I had continued to check the site, without taking of the bandage because I thought pressure dressings had to stay on for 24 hrs, and checking a pulse. When the night shift charge got there she started asking me if I had taken off the dressing when they brought the pt up from cath lab. I said no because I thought it had to stay on for 24 hrs. She starts going off, "Well then how do you know there is no hematoma?! You NEVER trust what the cath lab says! Now look at her blood pressure, don't you think you should have done something different?! Now this pt has a hematoma!" Then she proceeded to yell at me about a dobutamine drip that had run dry while I had been in the room with my cath patient. "Don't you know that is for the pt's cardiac output! You can't let those kind of drips run dry!"
I went and got a new bag, hung it, called the MD for my cath pt who was annoyed that I called about the pt's BP even though I felt like it was a concern. He then proceeded to question me as to why I let his pt get a hematoma...like I had done it on purpose. He then just told me to put pressure on it and that was it. I told the night charge, who didn't even acknowledge me when I spoke to her, so when I said it the second time she turned to me and snapped, "I heard you." I finished charting, made it to the elevator and cried.
I don't care what anyone says. No one should have to go to work and be made to feel like crap about themselves on a regular basis. Those of you who would like to respond to this senerio in a manner that goes something like this, "Well at least you won't do that again." Can go blow it out your bottom. People do not have to learn how to do things the right way by being put down, period. My other issue is that these were my two mistakes that day, but I had been able to keep up with my paper work, collect 5 samples for the lab, and start another nurses IV because she was having issues. No one noticed any of that, they only cared about the things I messed up.
I was looking at going into the military as a RN. From the forum I was reading, at least the expectations of the military might be a little more forward and more structured. I want structure so bad! I don't know. All I do know is that I want to take care of my patients. I like patients and caring for people, but I don't like being verbally abused by my charge nurses, doctors, and managers on a regular basis. I really don't need to be treated like that and I don't think I can work there much longer if all working does is make me feel worse about my self.
I'm willing to go to any extra educatioin that is suggested. I try to look things up on my own when I get home. But no one is pointing me in a direction. If the charges feel like I'm such a screwup why don't they have any suggestions that I could use to improve? Their best suggestion is for me to go to a med floor. I went and asked my NM if I could be moved to a med floor and she told me there are no openings, so now I'm moving to nights on my tele floor to see if I do any better. What I would really like, but no one seems capable of giving me, is a true evaluation of how I'm doing. Am I doing worse than an average new nurse? I'm I struggeling more than an average new nurse? Am I completely unprepaired, or am I exhibiting the knowledge and thinking skills that I should be at this point. Have I improved at all since I started?! These are all questions that I have asked my nurse manager, I need some feed back! All she could tell me was that only I could tell if where I was at was right for me and that she felt I was struggeling. Ha! Of course she feels that I'm struggeling. I TOLD her I was struggeling! What kind of feed back is that?!
*Sigh* I don't know what to do.