Need advice!!!! I hate my job

carolmaccas66, BSN, RN · Apr 10, 2011

OK, everyone is talking about whingeing/not whingeing. So here is MY advice:

we all know u can't just quit a job now. It's just not an option in this economy.

OP you need a plan of attack!

Try to figure out WHY your job is so stressful. Is it due to lack of experience? Do u have a good plan for your shift? Do u let people and patients manipulate your time, so that your plan goes out the window?

You MUST have good time management. You must let patients know u can only let spend so much time with EACH of them, ie: Hi Mrs ________ what can I get for you today? I have 6 other patients so I can only spend about 10 minutes with you b4 I have to go see Mr/Mrs ___________ and do (whatever). I find this works very well - the patient has an idea of your work load and your time constrants. You will always get a patient/s who are more needy than others, & u can give them a little more TLC - that usually makes them happy.

Do not let patients and people manipulate your time! You can waste many precious mintues without keeping an eye on the clock. If you need to toilet someone, or do a lift, you have to plan ahead how to do this and if you need other people.

Make out a sheet with times up the top and ur patients on the left hand side. Grab your patient files after handover, go thru them quickly & jot down what you need to do, ie: lifts, medications, IVs, whatever. Plan how much time you need to do each task. Also with IVs that are due, that need ABs added, or whatever, start them half an hour BEFORE they are due - try to think ahead of time and get caught up.

Nursing is VERY HARD - do not let anyone tell you it is not. We deal with many stressful human situations. I have said for years caring for people - especially very ill people - is the hardest thing to do with regards to health care.

See your manager and ask for help. Can you do any training courses, or shadow a more experienced nurse?

No system suggested on here will be perfect. If you have too many patients and can't cope, u will have to tell someone. Can you get agency nurses in to help out if you ask your NUM/DON?

I'm sorry u are so stressed. Try to look at your work as a challenge and not a disaster, and that may help.

Let us know how you get on please.

R*Star*RN, BSN, RN · Apr 10, 2011

Yes, not having time to talk to patients could be a time management issue. When you are a fresh nurse just out on the floor it will take a good year to "rub off the green". For instance, right now I can do 5 things at once and talk to the patient at the same time if I have to. . . I bet right now you need to pay a lot of attention to each detail! That will change in time.

Of course writing everything down helps free up a lot of mental space also! If I don't do this I find myself becoming "absentminded".

By all means if you think a different area would suit you better then apply for other positions. But please don't quit the position you currently have until you are guaranteed another, and other positions may be looking for that "1 year of acute care experience" before they hire you.

Best of luck

Oh I want to edit in a tip! Ok so I bet you learned about this in school, but it really helps to practice AIDET (http://www.sharp.com/choose-sharp/sharp-experience/aidet.cfm) and hourly rounding! Sometimes things are really hectic and you can't make it every hour, which is ok, but just tell your patient when you will next come to check on their needs and you will find that call lights go off a lot less! Always ask the patient if they need anything else (fluids, bathroom, etc) before you leave the room as well.

AOx1 · Apr 10, 2011

This is not directed at you, but my goodness I wish everyone would stop complaining. I'm really looking forward to being a nurse, and I come to this website to get motivation, and then I see countless posts about hating jobs and how this happened at work and the pay is not enough and I have too many patients BLAH BLAH BLAH...Here is the best advice I can give. If you don't like your job...QUIT. What are people going to tell you in a forum that will make your job better. get real and grow up this is the real world.

So, are you prepared to support all the unemployed nurses who take your "advice?" Because that is what will happen in this economy. Jobs are not easy to come by. Most of us have families and households to support. I have news for you: THAT is growing up and dealing with the real world. You work at the job you have until you can find something better. The bills must still be paid. The real world isn't about throwing your hands up and saying "I quit" at the first sign of obstacles and running back to the bank of mom and dad.

This is a forum for nurses, and nursing is an extremely difficult job. I've done it for the greater part of my life now. Those who come to this forum know nursing from first-line experience, not from a textbook, and it is not easy. The OP has every right to come on a nursing forum and start a thread. If you don't find the thread to be up to your motivational needs, perhaps you should skip over it or start your own thread.

OP: This is such a common and difficult situation. As someone who teaches students, mentors new grads, and has been doing this for years, there are many factors. First, as a somewhat recent grad, this is fairly common. It took me a year to feel like I really had the right routine for me, and just when you have a perfect routine, the day from hell :devil: likes to crop up to keep you humble. Part of it was the reality shock between taking only one patient and then having to manage an entire team. This is why my students today quickly work their way up to taking a full team, and do so for the last three semesters of our program. I don't want them to not realize what they will be doing in real life. Also, part of it is just the reality of the hospital environment today. I think most of us wish things were as you described: we have time to actually spend with our patients, to comfort and to educate. Instead, we are forced to do more with less. I have been lucky enough to work with some great managers who had some tricks for squeezing appropriate staffing from administrative restrictions, but they have been few. Because of all the pressure to do more/faster/with less/perfectly, some units are more stressful than others. Having a truly supportive team is difficult to find, but worth its weight in gold if you do.

I would consider your options. I do know some nurses who (at the 1 year mark) kept their full-time job and worked three 12-hour shifts. They then joined the float pool at another facility or their own in order to explore new options. This gave them the chance to "try out" different areas and floors. When they found the floor they loved, the waited for an opening. This has worked for three of my friends. Also, this sounds simplistic, but make sure you are taking care of yourself. Plenty of sleep, exercise, nutritious meals, and fun outside of work go a long way towards helping you keep your sanity. Also, don't forget there are many areas of nursing that aren't in a hospital. Good luck in any case.

abbyann · Apr 10, 2011

You ARE getting a lot of good, valuable experience that you can take with you when you move on to another field. That being said, it is AWFUL to get up in the morning and go off to a job you hate.

I don't believe that our clinical assignments give us much preparation in going into the "real world," but I don't see how that can be changed. Most of the staff at our clinical sites were very hostile to us, and it simply isn't possible for a nursing student to go off and do a full med run.

I really hope you'll be able to stick it out for your first year. I know, I bailed out of my first job after 3 months, but that was LTC and I don't know of any new nurses who have had good or positive experiences in that arena. Is the working environment tolerable, at least? Is it more the fact that you don't especially like tele, and you don't have the time to give your patients the time and attention you would like? Unfortunately, healthcare is all about cost control. Unless you go into private duty, there will always be a time constraint on what you are doing.

MomRN0913 · Apr 10, 2011

This is not directed at you, but my goodness I wish everyone would stop complaining. I'm really looking forward to being a nurse, and I come to this website to get motivation, and then I see countless posts about hating jobs and how this happened at work and the pay is not enough and I have too many patients BLAH BLAH BLAH...Here is the best advice I can give. If you don't like your job...QUIT. What are people going to tell you in a forum that will make your job better. get real and grow up this is the real world.

So, you're not a nurse yet, huh? It's not that simple. And it's not as easy as just quitting in this economy. Going thorugh all that hard work to become a nurse and seeing it is something different than what they imagined is hard. I always thought nurses got paid great, then I really say what they did, the responisbility, the accountability, not eating for 12 hours and getting to pee maybe once. Nurses are serverely underpaid in my opnion!

I hated nursing out of nursing school. I felt like a med pusher and psyche orderly. I was scared too. School did not prepare me for real nursing. I floated med-surg, then got an offer in the ICU. i took it. 2-3 patients, and although very sick, I got to do what I wanted. I criticcally thought, spent time with patients and families, educated them, made them comfortable, helped heal, helped save. Although, I must say as time went on and budgests decreased, staffing became very bad in ICU and you were running around like a chicken with your head cut off.

Hang in there. You will find your niche soon enough, but I defnitely can sympathize.

GHGoonette, BSN, RN · Apr 10, 2011

Hey, a few of the posters out there; sometimes inserted quotes from previous posts are not clearly highlighted and result in your post being a little confusing to subsequent readers. Amongst the icons in the reply box is one (lower row, third from right) which "wraps QUOTE tags around selected text". Highlight the line(s) you are quoting and click on the icon. This is only an issue when you delete a portion of the quoted text in order to address a specific aspect of the post.

OP, it's true that you are getting invaluable experience, and once you have this under your belt you can be more "picky and choosey" when you start looking around for your next job. Bear in mind that it takes easily 3 months just to develop your own system and routine, and even six months to a year before it all becomes second nature. AOx1 has (as usual) offered some brilliant advice, and I'm not going to add any more to that. Good luck, and I hope it gets easier in time.

sistasoul · Apr 10, 2011

I have been a nurse for 2 years and there is still no time to spend with patients. If I do I am staying over to chart and have been written up for it. My favorite part of being a nurse is bedside/hands on care and there isn't time for it. I am really disillusioned and disheartened. I love caring for my patients but the reality is that the hospital can not afford this.

I was just talking to a nurse last night who graduated in 1986 from nursing school about this. She had 4 patients and was able to do total care on them. Baths, feeding, etc. Nursing assistants were not used. She also told me there was one flow sheet to chart on and only wrote a note for exceptions. Today, the computer charting is horrendous and the admissions take forever. We are stuck behind this impersonal computer. What happened to the art of nursing? Is there anywhere in nursing we can go to where quality time can be spent caring for our patients without all of the horrendous paperwork?

Nursing school does not prepare one for being a nurse in the real world. I say bring back the 3 year diploma programs where students had a lot more clinical time and were functioning as nurses with a full assignment by the time they graduated. If this option had been around when I went to NS (graduated in 08) I definitely would have went this route and went back part time for my associates or bachelors.

nursejoed · Apr 10, 2011

This is not directed at you, but my goodness I wish everyone would stop complaining. I'm really looking forward to being a nurse, and I come to this website to get motivation, and then I see countless posts about hating jobs and how this happened at work and the pay is not enough and I have too many patients BLAH BLAH BLAH...Here is the best advice I can give. If you don't like your job...QUIT. What are people going to tell you in a forum that will make your job better. get real and grow up this is the real world.

Yet another reason why it would behoove a nursing site to be restricted to actual nurses....

Chin up · Apr 10, 2011

This is not directed at you, but my goodness I wish everyone would stop complaining. I'm really looking forward to being a nurse, and I come to this website to get motivation, and then I see countless posts about hating jobs and how this happened at work and the pay is not enough and I have too many patients BLAH BLAH BLAH...Here is the best advice I can give. If you don't like your job...QUIT. What are people going to tell you in a forum that will make your job better. get real and grow up this is the real world.

And this coming from the one who wrote and I quote, " I don't want to answer a call light and pour the patient a glass of water". You don't even like nursing...enough said.

hopefulwhoop · Apr 10, 2011

I totally understand where you're coming from. When I started working last year, I was also very disappointed. Nursing is nothing like I expected it to be. What we learned in school was the idealistic view of nursing, if that makes sense. Nursing, as a student, is very different from nursing, as a professional nurse. My advice is to stick it out. Don't quit (yet)! It sucks, I know. I'm in the same situation. But, I love my coworkers and they make each shift go by so much smoother. One thing I won't do though is vent about the job to them. I know you didn't mention that, but I just thought of one of coworkers. She's also new to nursing and she constantly vents about what she hates so much about the job--no bueno. You never know who to trust 100% and what you say might get back to the nurse manager and you could get fired.

prinsessa · Apr 10, 2011

I do not understand why students are not given 'real' assignments on their last clinicals. Why so many nurses who come here are disillusioned about what happens on the floors when they start to actually work.
Floor nursing is very hard work, but can be very fulfilling. Are we turning out too many nurses who have not had the opportunity to juggle their priorities?
And any job may take 6 months to a year, or even longer, to actually master. Why do so many of us think we should be fully developed in just a few weeks?
Give yourself some time to master your skills, learn to prioritize, and comprehend all the new material. Take care of yourself.
Best wishes!

We were given full patient loads during our last semester of nursing school. We had a leadership clinical where we could sort of pick the specialty we wanted to be in. I agree that it takes 6months-1 year to feel comfortable as a nurse. I have been working as a nurse for almost a year and I'm just now starting to feel comfortable. I can walk into a patients room and most of the time tell if something is wrong just by looking at them. I think part of the problem is that most new nurses aren't given enough of an orientation. I know I only got 8 days as a new grad.

DogWmn · Apr 10, 2011

I do not understand why students are not given 'real' assignments on their last clinicals. Why so many nurses who come here are disillusioned about what happens on the floors when they start to actually work.
Floor nursing is very hard work, but can be very fulfilling. Are we turning out too many nurses who have not had the opportunity to juggle their priorities?
And any job may take 6 months to a year, or even longer, to actually master. Why do so many of us think we should be fully developed in just a few weeks?
Give yourself some time to master your skills, learn to prioritize, and comprehend all the new material. Take care of yourself.
Best wishes!

As a dinosaur:rolleyes:, this is one of my biggest complaints about nurse education today, my last term we took full assignments got and gave report, working a full day shift then attending class, by the time we graduated, we had time management skills down and at our first jobs we had 2-3 weeks orientation to learn policies and where stuff was all the while taking a "lite" assignment and then we were good to go.

Theory is all fine and good but when it takes 4-6 months or more to train a new grad somethings wrong with the system.

And to the OP's point, being exposed to "real world" nursing at school would have helped you tremendously.

I loved working with the old Diploma nurses...they rocked:up:.