My co-workers are dropping like flies!

[grentea]

I love my floor, honestly I do, but lately I've been really stressed out. It started about three weeks ago when our secretary took a leave of absence. I'm not sure why and I'm actually worried about her because I really like her. Then this week one of my co-workers, a very experienced nurse who I really love working with, also took some sort of leave of absence. Again, not sure why. Then, for the past two nights one of the overnight nurses had called out sick, which somewhat effects me because I work 3-11. I stayed until 3AM the other night so that the other overnight nurse wouldn't be by herself with so many patients for the entire shift and one of the day shift nurses came in early. To top it all off, we've had a drastic increase in the acuity of our patients over the last week or so. My floor is a rehab floor so typically the patients we get are pretty stable. We've been getting some serious stroke patients lately, and other patients who are heavy care-wise, a few of them only one or two days out of the ICU. I had to stay late again due to an emergency with a patient who clearly was in a worsening neurological status. The truth is I enjoy the challenges of my floor and I know I can handle the patients we've been getting, but I'm just feeling like I don't have enough help and I miss my co-workers. It's stressful to be a nurse and a secretary at the same time. I mean sometimes we get a secretary on our shift but not always. There are two other nurses on my floor who work full-time but sometimes they get pulled because they're LPNs and then it'll usually be one of them, another RN pulled from a different floor, and me and now we have 17 or 18 patients on our floor (5 of whom are heavy care patients). The nurse who had been out the past week who I enjoy working with so much was my preceptor and I very much consider her to be a mentor so as a relatively new (and nervous) nurse it's comforting to work with someone who knows the ropes. I guess I'm just kind of stressed and sad and a little scared. I don't know where my co-workers are going and picking up the slack has been hard on me already. I'm not sure what else is going to happen. Certainly, I'm going to be having a talk with my NM, but anyways, thanks for letting me vent. I'm trying my best to be positive. :)

[Daytonite, BSN, RN]

I know it is scary to be on your own with your preceptor gone. It was bound to happen eventually. Keep in mind that if you ever run into a situation that you aren't sure of what to do, you just pick up the phone and page the supervisor and ask for his/her opinion and/or guidance.

Personnel changes in large organizations all the time. Sometimes it hits in one specific area and there can be a whole big turn over of the nursing staff. Other times it's one person here, another one there over a longer period of time. High patient acuity also tends to run in cycles as well. It will calm down eventually.

You are going to work with hundreds of nurses as you move through your career. It is always sad to see the ones you feel a closer affinity to kind of move out of your radar. As time goes on, you will no doubt be having that same effect on others yourself when your time comes to "move on". After 30 years I have lost all contact with all my former nursing school classmates and they with me. Even when I moved and promised to write and keep in touch, the letters get written or arrive after longer and longer intervals. This is life. I hope you have family because they are often the ones who become the stable forces in our lives.

Keep up the positive attitude. Approach these challenges as opportunities to learn and improve. Your worth as a staff nurse is in your flexibility to roll with the cards you are dealt as you are finding out. This is something that nursing school couldn't prepare you for. You either have it within you to cope with this, or you don't. Sounds like you are a survivor though. If it makes you feel any better, we all went through something similar, including having to learn to process our own orders because there was no unit secretary.

[Tweety, BSN, RN]

Sounds rough. I've seen units go through the same thing. I was on a neuro unit, with very high acuity and 5 nurses left, for various reasons without a few weeks of each other. Good luck!

[grentea]

Thanks Daytonite and Tweety. Things have been rough lately also from a numbers perspective in that we're short one person. Our ratio was 7:1 tonight and it was rough because some of our patients are pretty darn sick. Although I've realized that if I feel like I'm drowning or if I'm charge and I realize that I need some sort of help for the floor, if I ask the nursing supervisor for some help, he/she won't let me drown and neither will my co-workers. :)