My hospital is broke. BROKE. To the point where we're the lowest paid nurses in the area. We can't close cause we're a 260 bed county hospital and the only one around for miles who accepts trauma.
So here's the deal. Our broke-ness has led to a mass exodus of all the "good" nurses- the young, promising, bright nurses who are motivated and enthusiastic. Now the only thing left are the hardened mean old battle axes, the "I have no motivation to go anywhere else so I'll stay here and be miserable and make everyone else miserable" ones and the dumb ones. The morale and team environment on my floor sucks.
I knew this going in from my clinicals there, and still accepted the job because being a New Grad left me with zero options. I felt I had to jump on the first train leaving the station even though it was a broke down rusty old mess. But I had *no idea* how miserable it would make me.
I posted about my preceptor in another thread, so I won't go into detail here about it other than to say that she was horrible, awful, no good and very bad. She sets the tone for all the other nurses I work with: no comeraderie with anyone, wary of "outsiders" and generally unhelpful and mean. Two have stood out as being really awesome, but one of them is currently got her BSN and a year experience so she's being wooed by other places and won't be long until she's gone.
I was lied to when I got hired, saying I'd get cross trained to ICU and ER. Found out that will never happen, the unit supervisor just told me it would happen to get warm bodies in on the floor-- part of the reason we're broke is because of the mass exodus we're having to staff with agency nurses. I was told that during my orientation on days I'd spend at least 3 days in ICU. On my last day of days I asked my floor assistant supervisor (the unit sup is nowhere to be seen, ever) when I would be going over, and I got accused of overstepping my boundaries and then was asked if I really wanted to be there since I was already shopping around for another job. *****?
Our brokeness has led to dirty units. I mean just *dirty* and gross. No staff, no aides, no support. Many times we've had nurses with 5 patients or had the charge carry 4 patients plus act as resource for the LVN plus help a student nurse. Our patients, 9 times out of 10 are on contact isolation from MRSA and VRE cause we care for every indigent IV drug user in the county it seems (it's wintertime, afterall)-- not that I have an issue with that because I think they need care just as much as other people. But can I tell you how many times patients with regular insurance will be admitted from ER post trauma or whatever and the family will insist on having them transferred because "We have insurance, we don't need to be here. The care here is atrocious."
Because of our brokeness, what used to be the ICU step down unit (my unit, aka the Progressive Care Unit) is now just med-surg with tele. They don't want to pay us for being a PCU unit but we still get vented patients, heparin drip patients, dobutamine drip patients, etc. All of the things you'd expect from a PCU unit. So they left the floor the same but just renamed it so they could justify paying us less. So no raises in the past 2 years. None forseen either.
I am smart, motivated, assertive. I ask good questions with very strong rationales, I am intelligent and friendly. This has made me marked with a scarlet A-- they call me aggrressive, a loudmouth, tell me I butt in too much and that I'm trying too hard to fit in. So when I interrupt a conversation about where Nurse X bought her knockoff coach purse to get help because I've never hung blood before or I have a question about why a certain drug was ordered or need help starting an IV, I'm a buttinsky. I get eyerolls, heave sighs. They think I ought to know all of this by now, they think I should be able to handle 4 patients, nevermind that I've never had a vent patient before, nevemind that nursing school left me sorely lacking for experience with jevity feeds or hanging blood (not allowed to do them) and didn't prepare me for all the administrative duties of a floor. But they think I ought to know this by now. And I'm afraid that when I fail miserably on my first day on my own that I'll be ostracized even further because I can't handle it.
Any words of encouragement? I like many others plan to get my year experience and head for the hills because I don't see this getting any better. But to make the next year go by smoothly I am either going to need some serious antidepressants or a crapload of bourbon, or both (haha).
Sorry so long but I needed to vent to people who understand where I'm coming from. My husband god love him is a saint but he doesn't get it.
