It's just not working...

Recovering_RN · Jul 18, 2017

Sorry you're having such a hard time. My background is ER and that is all I know. When I entered TPAPN I couldn't find an ER job so I ended up in home health. Totally different job than what I was used to! I stayed for 8 months, and then managed to get hired by a small free standing ER (thank goodness!! Not the type of ER environment I was used to but WAY closer than home health!).

In TPAPN, I had to have one consecutive year of employment during my 3 year contract to be considered eligible to successfully complete the program (my 8 months in home health counted towards that because there was no break between that job and my freestanding ER job). If I hadn't been able to find an ER job, my plan was to stick it out with home health until I got to the one year mark. Then I would just quit and do something else. I didn't even care what it was. Working at a library or bookstore, or a fabric shop, or something else that correlated to one of my hobbies. Even a grocery store! Obviously that would've been a huge pay cut, but I planned to suck it up and deal with the drop in income for the remaining year and 8 months of my contract. It had taken me about 4 months into the contract to finish up IOP and then get a job, so if I worked for the required year, I'd have a remaining year and 8 months left after that.

I don't know if you have stipulations like I did for how long you have to work in nursing to complete your program, but you should find out. Maybe you could stay there and deal with the job if you knew you had a light at the end of the tunnel. Then quit and just work wherever, keep doing your drug screens and monthly paperwork, until your contract is finished. After that, go back to he type of nursing you want to, come up with a reasonable story to explain leaving nursing for awhile (kids getting ready to leave home, wanted to spend the last year or two at a less stressful job, whatever).

I know a lot of people don't have the luxury of just quitting a full time job to go work at Starbucks or whatever, but if you do, maybe just fulfill your monitoring requirements for work and then just take a break from nursing. Don't quit your monitoring, just do the minimum required nursing time then take a break from nursing and coast through the rest of the contract.

catsmeow1972, BSN, RN · Jul 18, 2017

The thing is I've got a 5 yr contract. I'm coming up on the 3 yr mark. It took me 9 months to find a job. My first job with this albatross of a contract WAS OR. i was there for 16 moths. There was a 3 month lull between the two, because i had to relocate and because of IPNs BS held up my start date for a month. Now its been. Now it's been almost 8 months that i've been here. I like it, it's just that I'm so as I said, out of my element and it's showing.

i went to get approval for a new identical position and all of a sudden they took issue with it. I wound up on the floor but like I said, it's like being in a foreign country. It doesn't help that there is a significant pay difference between the two either. For people that are supposedly nurses, they sure as heck don't understand the difference in areas of nursing are like night and day and not easily interchangeable.

SororAKS, ADN, RN · Jul 23, 2017

Petition for early release from IPN. Have your lawyer with you when you do. It's about time for this to end.

catsmeow1972, BSN, RN · Jul 23, 2017

tried to PM, your mailbox is full....

SororAKS, ADN, RN · Jul 23, 2017

Gotcha. Try again, I deleted a few old messages.

tried to PM, your mailbox is full....

Treehugger444 · Aug 2, 2017

I can so relate to what you are stating. I successfully completed my contract in 2008, which I am certain that all who are here know that its nothing short of miraculous to complete their crazy, inhuman stipulations for those who have this. Furthermore, the marks and stigma that I personally feel that I have had to endure related to this nonsense has limited me in the areas that I can work in, which ended up being in insurance and risk adjustment coding. My last position was in this area, I did this very well as a contract nurse for 2 years, and then my contract ended in January of 2017. I have glowing recommendations, I could be tested on any random day and would be fine (but my God I will never again personally pay for that ignorance!!). Here it is August, and I am still jobless and have actually started to apply for jobs outside of nursing. I find myself now wondering why I even bothered with the program if this is where it was going to lead.

I wish I had some inspiration for you, but I am being truthful from my experience here. This program has ruined a lot of good souls in nursing who have healed and improved their lives, only to have to live out under the crappy "dictatorship" and imposed stigma of the ignorant. It's like being blacklisted really. I tell myself everyday that I deserve much, much better than this stress of feeling like I need to explain myself for something that happened over 20 years ago and was situational. Not that I am an AA advocate by any means, but if the first step was "we admit we are powerless....." and they FORCE this onto participants of this program, how can they in all fairness hold one accountable if they are, in fact, powerless? I could go on and on with the many things that have crossed my mind over the years.......most of it completely exposes the hypocrisy of these stupid contracts.

The other issue for me is that I have relocated, and once before tried to secure a license in another state AFTER I had successfully completed the PA VRP program, thinking there would be no problem, which was NOT the case. I spent a lot of money trying to get the NJ license and they declared that I needed to go through their stupid program to "prove" to them. Seriously, how much money does one need to spend and how long does one need to go through all this before you are finally treated fairly, justly and like a human being with feelings, and a soul with a need to be self-sufficient with a decent opportunity for employment? Anyway, because of that, I am not too keen on applying in the state I live in now. In my last job, I worked in a non-clinical setting and any active unrestricted license was acceptable, as it was remote work.

So, there is my comment on this matter. I have found that when I am having these feelings, like you have stated, there is a message in there somewhere and that if I don't heed it, eventually it can become a crisis. Maybe I am hitting all these roadblocks and obstacles because I am simply meant to work in some other capacity, although I don't know what that actually is. Nursing has been my life, I was honored to be in it. They, however, were not honored by me when I got sick with dependency on benzos (that were prescribed for me due to dealing with a child who had a brain tumor, among many other things) and needed compassion instead of judgment, love instead of harsh (as opposed to constructive) criticism. I read somewhere that you may do 99 things right and well, but the world will remember the one thing you did wrong.

I completed their stupid program, every single chain of custody was clean. I did this whether I was sick, or if my son was yet again in the hospital and I was fearful to have to leave him to go drop urine, if the weather was bad (I had to drive about 45 mins and later over an hour away to go drop urine.) I did this when finding out horrible violations that happened to my older son, I did this when I got divorced by learning how to do it in a library and filing my own motions since I could not afford legal counsel.

I wish you well in whatever you come to decide is best for you. While it may not seem to matter the accomplishments we have made to these people involved in these programs, I do have faith that God knows, and that it matters greatly to Him.