I am sooooooooo SICK AND TIRED of the CRAP being dealt with by us nurses! I am giving up nursing for good! Back to college for a new degree in a totally different career field where I can get the respect and appreciation for what I invest most of my time in these days.
I am TOTALLY disgusted with family members accusing me of doing wrong when I did NOT do anything wrong! I'm sick and tired of NOT getting any recognition for the GOOD things I do as a nurse!
I work three twelve hour shifts a week. In the process of working those 36 hours plus, I care for at least five to seven patients a shift (counting discharges and new admits before the shift is over). Mulitply those five (let's do the minimum here) times three days worked, and that's 15 patients a week...60 patients a month. Out of 60 patients, dealing with their family members complaints, the patients issues and sometimes complaints, the doctors and the other hospital staff involved with those 60 patients, a few strangers come along and make out like I'm the worse nurse they've ever laid eyes on. Do I get credit for the 57 plus patients who happened to like the care received by them from me? Oh noooooooo....just let ONE irate family member complain about something I did NOT do, or let a doctor complain they didn't get what they wanted when they wanted it, let me come into work and be the nurse blasted by unhappy family or patients for the care they've received all week (not from me by the way cause I've not been at work all week), and I'm NOT a nice nurse. Whatever!
I QUIT!!! Those people have walked on me for the last time! I am NOT their handmaiden. Heck, I'm not even respected as "the nurse", so why stay in nursing. Someone PLEEEEEEZZZZZ tell me WHY should I stay in this crappy disrespectful put the nurses down for everything that goes wrong field?
Ya know, I think HIPPA does for us about what diarrhea does for Mexico! Just makes pt's want to scream and stay home and deliver...sheesh. Oh well my large hippas were in the woman's way blocking her view of the strip so I guess I was protecting at least my part of the documentation. It was ok w/ pt. for her to see screen. This chick even opened the door and exposed pt's perineum to those in hallway after baby cried because she wanted to come see right away! Imagine that! OB doc tossed Ms. Monitor out of room for delivery because she allows two people only other than pt. and staff during the birth. I couldn't block door because at barely 5 feet tall, my little arms just could not reach to hold door shut!!! Probably another HIPPA violation too.It has been years since I have had such a strong desire to tell anyone off at work as I did that night. Although, I can laugh about it, it preposterous that a bystander has the b*lls to interfere w/ a pt's care in this fashion. To tell you the truth, it struck me so off guard when she first said it, I couldn't believe what she was saying!
well, by george, i think it's high time we incorporated that to use as our own back up system..."interfering with the duites of a nurse" and have the person hauled off !!!
"interfering with the duties of a nurse?" honeychild, the duties of a nurse are as follows:
1. welcome the customer to the floor as if you were a wal-mart greeter, putting on your best "people-person" smile.
2. make sure the customer gets settled in their room, to their satisfaction. if they need anything, run and get it and be quick about it.
3. also, of prime importance is the customer's family! their needs, wants, and desires must be addressed......we are "treating" this "patient" holistically, doncha know.
4. make sure you have time enough to stand there and be the repository for all their complaints and gripes: i.e., how long they had to wait in e.r. "while mama's head was bustin'", how incompetent everyone is.....etc....etc......above all, agree with every idiotic word that drops out of their mouths, because customer satisfaction is #1 priority!!!
(maybe, just maybe somewhere along the line you might get the chance to get their health history, vitals, and any other extraneous information besides what they want to snack on....!
:imbar
nice try.
not this kid. ain't doin' it . sorry ! just ain't happening here.
nope. wrong. nix, nein, frankenstein.
while i'm all for being courteous and helpful, i will not bend over and pass out the vaseline. it's a two way street.
to the jerk who wanted the pillow change "immediately" and had the audacity to throw it out into the hall :
"would you prefer your family member first receive her prescribed medications so she can recover, or is it of higher priority that you have your pillowcover changed at this time? if this is the case, allow me to direct you to the linen cart down the hall... this is a hospital, and not the comfort inn... now if you will excuse me as i tend to the care of my patients..."
to the visitor who insisted on seeing the contractions:
"i'm here to look after the wellbeing of the patient.. she is my primary concern... would you have it any other way?" (then smile reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeal big!!!)
and under my breath "perhaps you would like to just have them for her instead?"
no, guys... when visitors begin to interfere with the care as in the above example of the pillowcase while in the middle of medpass when the nurse is obviously needing to concentrate on her task at hand... that's where i draw the line and refuse to coddle these fools. and if admin. were to call me on it, i'd tell them to their face the same thing and ask what their priority would be in the same circumstance. i would not hesitate for a moment to also remind them that i work in a hospital and not a hotel. and that even in hotels there are behaviors which are not permitted. if they want hotel staff, they could certainly get them a whole lot cheaper than me.... and to go at it !
geeesh. so now we've traded our nursing uniforms for the little french maid outfit? fluff and puff with a featherduster in one hand and a pill tray in the other? and lets not forget the vaseline in the apron pocket !!! grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr..r..r..rrr..rrrrr...rrr....
We all have our issues with nursing today. I am so glad we have a safe and nurturing space to come to when our issues become too heavy to carry alone. I hope each of us finds a way to carry on in this profession. If not, I hope we find happiness in the new role we have chosen. Cheerful, please take some time for yourself to think about what you really want and need to do to.
About the flies, what do maintance men do at your facility? This sounds like a job for them. I would love to have a bumper sticker that says, "Nurses, the profession that CAN NOT be replaced!"
I try to send positive thoughts and prayers to all of my friends on this board every day. I hope you know each and every one of you has been a big help to me in the last few weeks. I will continue to pray for us with the knowledge that God will see us through anything if we have to courage to believe in his grace.
As a pre - nursing student I cannot say I can feel your pain but before you leave your profession, let me tell you a bit about mine.... I work for a computer company and I and about 30 co-workers (in just this department) spend the entire day wishing we were some place else... As we are part of an inside sales team (telesales to people at work) the highlight of my day is making a sale and therefore making my CEO's packet fatter. The tools I sell make someone's job easier...that is it, nothing else. Say I spend the next 25-30 years of my life doing that, I will be able to look back and say...gee, I helped video games become faster and more fun to play. I have to justify spending 40 hours a week away from my son to do this? It is not very satisfying. The extent of warm fuzzes I get from people I work with is an email that says thanks for getting me this really cool software.
Now lets talk about the boss...if I walk in just 1 minute late, I have to worry that I will see him as he makes his rounds about our cubes and give you the evil eye and look at his watch to make sure you know he knows you are late. If I take 2 minutes to check the weather on the net, I can expect if he sees it on one of his passing bys to get a comment like, "you need to make more phone calls." We have meetings and offer suggestions to make our jobs more productive, we are met with responses such as, "That is a great idea, but my hands are tied, I only do what I am told to." My son goes to preschool in the building and the company allows the kids to go trick or treating to various floors during Halloween. I had to ask my mother to come to work to take him because it was the last day of the month and as a sales professional, "I need to be on the phone closing deals". I am required to make 65 dials a day. They track every phone call I make each day and will question us if I have too many calls to my home (many people have 2 -3 min calls home twice a day after their kids are home from school.) They use pass cards to monitor when I leave my office floor, main building entrances and parking deck. If I am off the phone for an hour and 2 minutes around lunch for more than a few days in a row, they will ask why I am coming back late from lunch. People have gotten called out of the bathroom to discuss issues with our bosses (remember, no one is going to die if I take an extra five minutes on the potty). People literally will duck and walk hunched over so they are not seen walking from a co-worker's cube by our boss. You cannot hang out with some people because he does not like them and he has even gone so far as to say, don't hang around that person. If you and a co-worker are talking about work and he comes by, he will ask why you are talking and why you are not working. When you explain that you were talking about work he will then go into a 5 min tangent about how we are wasting time and not making money.
Basically, all of us here are for the paycheck and to be honest, I made more than 50K a year. This job has no security. If we don't sell the cut the sales force without notice. They just moved our company into a brand new gazillion dollar building with plasma screen TV's everywhere and are now cutting costs 6 months later. If you make less than 2% of your quota so far this year, your salary was cut by 50%. This was done in an effort to not cut any jobs...although, each day we hear about 10 people in various departments are getting fired.
Remember, my job is just a job...it is nothing fancy. I just sell stuff to people. No one will thank me like I have seen some of you post about how I helped them thru a difficult time. But I will get hung up on, yelled at, and told that I am useless every day (our boss ranks us in order of sales and emails it to us about 3 times a day). My worth is only measured on what I sold that day and only that day. Be aware that I am a university graduate and many of my colleagues have MBA's. I am professional and expect to be treated as such (no such luck). The department is known through out our company for having mirrors on our desk so we can spot our boss when he sneaks up on us.
So, what I am trying to say is the grass is not always greener on the other side. I think unless you are at home with the proceeds of a 70 million dollar lottery jackpot to live off of, we all will dislike/hate/can't stand/want to quit/are not respected/treated well parts of our jobs. So if you plan on changing careers from nursing to fill in the blank or fill in the blank to nursing, there will be things that piss you off. You just have to look inside yourself and ask, is this worth me spending 40+ hours a week away from what I like doing (spending time with my family, reading, surfing, playing sports, raising my son?). For me this job is not. I don't want to feel in 30 years I spent so much time doing something I hated. I plan on switching careers/jobs till I find one that I can go to and say that at least I can tolerate doing what I did today to pay my bills.
My next step is still to do nursing...even with all the things I read. I would rather spend 40 hours away from my son doing three 12's than spending 40 straight here. At least, I will be able to be home with him most days when he gets off the school bus. I know you are treated like crap a lot, but I would rather take being treated like that and know that at some point I was helpful to someone in a more meaningful way than selling a software tool that allowed them to make their CEO's pocket fatter.
And to top it all off, I just got an email from out company that the proceeds from orders we make from a company that sells nuts (gift giving idea) that the proceeds will benefit a high school in the suburbs (which I was a graduate of). Said high school is one of the top 3 school districts in the state (and in the country) it is in the middle of one of the richest counties in America. The proceeds are going to help my alma matter's school band. Mind you, we are headquartered in the center of Detroit where their kids don't even have half the things the other school has...I had books, they don't in many cases! As a graduate of that school, I can tell you first hand those kids are not in need of additional funds!
Sorry I was so long!
Btw, I could have just made 25 dials while writing this post :)
Y'know, I've given a lot of thought to this topic today, because it really bothers me.
And I can't help but wonder... is it just NURSES who are getting abused, or is it that people in general have just become totally rude, callous, direspectful, and selforiented...??? Would these same people not be just as rude to the waiter/waitress, the office clerk, the store clerk, the flight personell... ANYBODY?
Perhaps being at the receiving end, we are sensitive to it, but surely those others out there who are treated this way feel the same as we !
Maybe it's universal... folks have just gotten ugly. Makes ya wonder.
Not that it's acceptable... NO one should be abused, and NO one should have to accept this kind of behavior or tolerate it.
Tooty, thanks for the glance at the "other side of the fence". I'm one of those who always wonders what it might be like to sit at a desk to work instead of running hospital hallways for 12-13 hours at a stretch. Maybe a desk job isn't as easy as it seems!
jnette, I think you're on to something. A while back I was whining to my son, "Why is everyone so MEAN to NURSES?" He said, "Mom, everybody's mean to EVERYBODY! Just look at how people treat waitresses and sales clerks! And EVERYBODY hates LAWYERS!" (He's a law student).
Specializes in Specializes in L/D, newborn, GYN, LTC, Dialysis.
No one said it's just nursing who feels the pain...
it IS universal, you are so right. The most- abused profession in my opinion is NOT the computer, telemarketing, fast-food service industries or even NURSING......IMO, It's the military.
But to me, it's ok to vent AND since the majority of us ARE nurses, the vents will mainly be from/about/due to problems and issues facing us in NURSING today.
Oh, yes, we sometimes DO need reminding the "grass is not always greener"...but most of us know this. (for many of us, like me, this is a 2nd or even 3rd career, so we are not oblivious). We are not venting in order to burst anyone's bubbles, hurt feelings, or look for "saviors" to come in and be cheerleaders--- pushing us onward and upward. It's not always as complicated as that. It's just griping...in a place where it's safe to do so, in a place where others know how it is....Kinda like "Cheers", where everybody knows your name, KWIM????
.......often this is the place we do it..... choosing not to do this at home or at work. Really, for me anyhow, it is simple as that.:)
Oh, I do agree, Deb ! Very much so. I wasn't saying we shouldn't vent... not at ALL ! I was just pondering WHY ppl are so rude anymore... that surely it couldn't be just against nurses... but of ALL ppl to show a little more appreciation, I think we do deserve just a tad more kindness after all we DO... so no, please don't misunderstand my previous post. :)
Sorry guys...I was trying to get to the point that jnette said succinctly...pain is universal. That is what my ramblings were meant to imply.
Venting is a normal part of anyone's career and you guys have a great & healthy way to do it.
I just put my 2 cents in cause I saw some posts about people saying they were going to switch and if they were serious and not just griping I would hate to see them do that without knowing what is up. But you are probably right, most people are older and this is the 2nd or 3rd change so they are not going into things so naive.
Do I get credit for the 57 plus patients who happened to like the care received by them from me? Oh noooooooo....just let ONE irate family member complain about something I did NOT do, or let a doctor complain they didn't get what they wanted when they wanted it, let me come into work and be the nurse blasted by unhappy family or patients for the care they've received all week (not from me by the way cause I've not been at work all week), and I'm NOT a nice nurse. Whatever! 
nice try.
SmilingBluEyes
20,964 Posts
Imenid, remember, that fetal strip IS medical documentation and therefore protected by HIPAA..............................
bet you did not want to hear that one, eh????
sorry, just HAD to throw that one out to ya. I as an OB Nurse CAN SO RELATE to what you are saying in your post.:roll :roll :roll