No need to be upset at the truth! Change careers

[RNGriffin]

One thing that has baffled me on this website is individuals always are up in arms when the truth is, if you have no passion for the profession you need to make life decisions for yourself. Most individuals come on allnurses.com to complain about the nursing profession, long hours, nursing staff, arrogant doctors. The truth is, this is not Mcdonalds where you work the job because it's a requirement for survival. You entered into college and chose a profession that makes you miserable, spent countless hours studying a subject that you have no interest in, and entered the work field to make others who are passionate about their careers miserable. Yet, many complain that the healthcare field has taken a turn for the worse. Has it ever occurred to those same individuals, if there was no passion for the career to begin with there would be none after starting your first, second, third, or even tenth position?

Maybe it's my family values that taught me, if I don't love what I do there is no way I will ever be successful in life. Success is not defined by the basic salary, but level of contentment with my life all together.

So I say, if you hate nursing make life decisions so the rest of us can enjoy our jobs.

[mg2312]

Wow, this thread is interesting(with

the varied views from actual nurses to prospective nurses)!

my opinion: you do have to be passionate about nursing to get into it. otherwise you will be miserable at your job which will affect the quality of care you give to your patients(yes, I realize this is an assumption).

HOWEVER, it is just a job and people need to realize that. to claim you're fully passionate and will continue to thrive on passion alone as a nurse is very naive. (my opinion) you need to look at it as "a job" and leave your work behind at the end of your shift or else you will get burned out very fast.

I don't mean to sound rude with this:

but it seems as if the "future nurses" on this thread are a little judgmental and unrealistic. Pre nursing, nursing school and actual nursing are very different worlds!!

[Lovely_RN, MSN]

I so agree. I saw this thread and was like huh? So if you have a problem with being worked half to death and being treated like poo then there is something wrong with you? This is why I say leave the floor nursing to those who like the abuse. Things will never change for the better because co-workers like the OP are fine with being treated like crap.

There is a lot of abuse in nursing. Some people must publicly crucify themselves and tell people that they actually believe they are worthy over others of being crucified, eg. Abuse begets abuse. Psychologically they are also unable to porifice this abuse as it happens to them, so one way of dealing is to say that it's not abuse and that they are not victims of anything of the kind, and are actually of a higher conscience than other members of the profession in that they are able to consciously continue and actually invite abuse because it's a requirement of the job - it's in the manual, and they know they can deliver.

It's called GASLIGHTING oneself, actually.

[morte, LPN, LVN]

Also called martyr syndrome.....

I so agree. I saw this thread and was like huh? So if you have a problem with being worked half to death and being treated like poo then there is something wrong with you? This is why I say leave the floor nursing to those who like the abuse. Things will never change for the better because co-workers like the OP are fine with being treated like crap.

[Stephalump]

Many people who work a job they don't like ARE making life decisions. They're deciding they can't quit for some reason or another. Maybe they hope to move up or away from bedside some day. Maybe they can't afford to go back to school. Maybe they'd rather have the relative job security in this climate than go forge their way into the world. Maybe they just stick with what they know. Maybe they are still hoping for change.

(Ir)regardless, it's no ones responsibility to leave their job so they can allegedly make your job more enjoyable - maybe turn it into some idealistic bubble where everyone sings kumbaya before a shift and wears "We Love Our Job" tshirts under their scrubs. This is real life. And it's each individual person's real life. Blanket, unquantifiable traits such as "passion" sound REALLY great, and I'm glad you feel you have it, but it doesn't give you some extraordinary rights to a job. Those who REALLY hate it will probably leave soon after they start. No worries.

[HM-8404, BSN, RN]

Something I have noticed with many new nurses and nursing students is they don't have a realistic idea of what the job is like. Many fail to realize it is a JOB. Often they grew up seeing nurses as "angels" or a way to meet and marry the cute doctors portrayed on tv. Even while in nursing school often they encounter the mean, nasty nurses during clinicals, but choose to ignore it.

People should do themselves a favor and thoroughly research the job before getting into it. They need to realize when they walk into a patients room the patient will not get all teary eyed because an angel just entered. They need to realize that a nurse is much closer to the bottom of the totem pole rather than the top.

One of the biggest mistakes I see in the nursing profession is the nurse's resistance to require a BSN to become an RN. As long as you can take a fresh high school graduate and make them an RN in 5 semesters, approx 21 months, you are fairly easy to replace. Even a RT program is 6 semesters at many schools. Does a BSN make you a better nurse? No, but looking at it from the administration's point of view it would be harder to replace a person in a job that takes 4 yrs to complete. I would imagine they see someone with an AAS or AS degree as disposable. Until that happens RN pay will stay far below what a MSN, CRNA, or NP makes.

[Anna Flaxis, BSN, RN]

LOL OH PLEASE. I LOVE patient care. I LOVE what I do. I don't love being treated like a disposable commodity, instead of a human being. I don't love when people treat me with disrespect like I'm a slave or worse, and I don't love unsafe working conditions that make work unpleasant and make patients unsafe. If you're complacent and okay with unsafe working conditions and poor patient care, please continue to hold our profession back and accept being treated like a customer service rep with a stethoscope. For myself, I'll keep trying to make nursing what I know it can be, mostly pleasant and rewarding, and most of all, safe care for patients.

This, a million times!

[CrunchRN, ADN, RN]

Not everyone can realistically meet their responsibilities to their families and financial responsibilites after investing the time and money only to find out their chosen carreer is not a good match.

[GitanoRN, BSN, MSN, RN]

lol oh please. i love patient care. i love what i do. i don't love being treated like a disposable commodity, instead of a human being. i don't love when people treat me with disrespect like i'm a slave or worse, and i don't love unsafe working conditions that make work unpleasant and make patients unsafe. if you're complacent and okay with unsafe working conditions and poor patient care, please continue to hold our profession back and accept being treated like a customer service rep with a stethoscope. for myself, i'll keep trying to make nursing what i know it can be, mostly pleasant and rewarding, and most of all, safe care for patients.

unquestionably, i love your passion and sense of reality regarding our beloved nursing profession, therefore, i shall quote what a wise person said once "choose a job you love and you'll never have to work a day in your life"....

now wait for it~

[VictoriaGayle]

I know some great nurses who are passionate about patient care that hate their jobs because of the facility or administration doing things that lower the quality of patient care.

I do think there are some nurses who shouldn't be nurses. If you are completely incappable of kindness, maybe you need to be less involved in direct patient care.

Lots of the people in my class have idealistic views of nursing that will be shattered soon. They know how rewarding patient care is, but lack the experience to realize many of the things that make it so rewarding will drive you crazy!

[barbyann]

Everyday I suffer through twenty pages of documentation, that no one will ever read (except auditors), to get to the sick people on the other side. That IS passion.

[sydzmommy]

Thanks for the kind words beeker :) I dunno if it is harder, just different.

One case sticks out in my mind.

A young beautiful sweet blue eyed husky. He developed a pyothorax (foreign body?), needed a thoracotomy, lung lobectomy. He was the best patient ever pre op. His owners scraped up the thousands of dollars for his surgery, they wanted to save their beloved family member! It was a struggle for them.

I recovered him post median sternotomy (ouch!) he was stable intraop (needed some cells) and initially did well. SHortly post op he goes from wagging his tail at me, to pallor before my eyes. It is 2 am. His bp's drop. I am aspirating blood from his chest tube. Within minutes my faculty is there, we are pumping units into this beautiful dog as quickly as he bleeds. He dies right before my eyes. One minute he is looking at me with those beautiful blues, giving kisses, then next he is coding and I am bagging him with a bain circuit filling with blood until the owners can come say goodbye. What caused his hemorrhage, don't know, maybe he was a Von Willebrand dog, will never know. The owners could not take him back to surgery. They were out of money I cried right along side them as they euthanized him. I put everything I had into saving their family member. It was emotionally exhausting, still brings tears to my eyes. These are moments I experience working in ICU, most of my patients die. BUT, I am there to deliver the best care I can to my patients.

We all practice under the umbrella of medicine. We advocate for our patients, and hopefully give our patients the best care we can under the circumstances given to us. So yes, I do the job I do because I love critical care, and medicine. Does it suck at times, absolutely, will being a registered nurse be even worse, it sounds like it I am not naive in that, believe me.

And, sorry to be long winded, I am lucky too have a wonderful job, making the same salary as many nurses on this board, with full benefits. Not all new (or potential) nurses are making career choices uniformed, or solely for the money. Unfortunately, I have advanced as far as I can in my current position. I cannot leave my position at the university and still make the same salary, essentially there is not a lot of room for growth. That is why am making the informed decision to enter nursing, for lateral mobility and professional growth. In othere words, there is no masters degree available, and no, I do not want to be a vet! (do NP's want to be Md's?) LOL

[MA_Davis]

There are people here who love to complain about their jobs who are on chemo, too. If you don't like what you read, the answer is not to stifle other people from expressing themselves. Don't read them. There are lots of positivity threads here for you.. . and a functional ignore button so you won't even need to see posts from people who offend you.

Maybe you misunderstood, I meant in General not just on this site..personally I have not even been on this site long enough and don't have enough time to read all the rant and raves..lol and most of the time I skip over a lot of BS on here...so....you telling this to the wrong person...but in return wouldn't that be the same thing we are doing on this post ...getting it out how we feel about the nurses that complain...and whine...???So if you don't like it...you shouldn't read my post either..hmm...All I was saying is I know people not on here..but in person...that have way more problems they should be complaining about..and that I think it is selfish for people to say..they were going through something that's why they were at work taking it out on patients...But I accept your opinion but I barely read posts...so comment is not completely applicable to me...as I said I'm speaking in GENERAL not just this site...