More burnt out than I've ever been

[nurse6527]

Needing to vent...

For the first time in the 4 yrs of working on my floor I am burnt out to the point where I am not sure I want to stay there.

The experienced nurses are severely outnumbered by the new ones..which would be OK if the new ones were trained from the get go that expectations are the same for everyone..you can have 5 pts, you cannot look at other nurses' assignments and decide you like their pts better (resulting assignments being changed the next night so the newer nurses are happier)---that there is a line between helping a new nurse with stuff throughout the night vs. the experienced nurse taking over part of the new one's assignment...old timers are now be used as scapegoats if the newer nurses have a bad night even though there is lots of evidence pointing to chronic time management problems on the part of the newer nurses. It's not that us oldtimers have better pts or assignments..it's that we have the time management down to an artwork and it shows. We may be seen having "more" downtime than the new nurses and they resent it.

Telling management this stuff is like talking to a wall--it falls on deaf ears. I keep trying to convince myself that this will eventually catch up to the new nurses, that they will run out of scapegoats, excuses, etc..

Any extra shifts that I had thought about signing up for this next month I've cancelled. More and more of the shifts are filled with the less experienced nurses and maybe one oldtimer. So the oldtimer gets dumped on..we don't get to refuse that 5th pt yet the newer nurses do..to the point where the charge nurse will take pts just so the new nurses will be happy. Somehow, us oldtimers don't get that option.

Management "raised" these nurses to be this way yet us old timers are taking the brunt of it all.

It's almost like management is more scared of losing the new nurses than us experienced ones.

I really hope it gets better soon..I don't want to transfer but it feels like push has come to shove.

[canoehead, BSN, RN]

I agree that everyone should get the same workload to start with, and that newbies need to be responsible for their own patients. What I prefer though, is that everyone helps each other out so we all are able to sit down for some time during the shift. If you have someone taking advantage of you I can certainly understand why you wouldn't want to help them anymore. Has this been discussed at a staff meeting where old and new staff can come toan agreement?