I work in a LTC facility, and the company is horrible. Like, beyond horrible. I've put up with a lot of crap from them and I've only worked there a couple of months. Today I walked onto the floor at the beginning of my shift and was immediately alerted to the fact that another nurse had called in sick and I was gonna be assigned her patients PLUS my own. That would have made 46 patients. I'm a new nurse, I'm not comfortable with that AT ALL. I haven't clocked in yet or done my narcotics count and received report from the off going nurse. I immediately go to the aDON's office to let her know that I wasn't comfortable taking the assignment and she simply said, "You have to. We don't have anyone else to cover right now and if you don't accept it you could lose your license for abandonment". Im a new nurse, but I'm not stupid. I know the abandonment law. I have to receive report and accept responsibility for the patients first for it to be considered abandonment. I said that to her and she said, "Well you're welcome to leave right now, but if you do it'll be job abandonment and you'll not be eligible for rehire". That's fine with me, this place is a crap hole anyway. So in the heat of the moment, I decided to walk out. There's no way I was accepting the assignment and I wasn't about to be bullied into it. Now that I'm about to begin the job hunt again, I'm worried about how this is gonna affect my career. I know it's gonna look bad that my first nursing job I only held for a few months and suddenly walked out on. What should I do? And is there a better way I could have handled the situation? At the time, I was just so offended and pissed off that I walked out without a second thought. I'm taking this as a learning experience now.
