Buckle up, I ended up typing way more than I thought I would:
So, I mainly need someone to vent to, but I also need the experience and wisdom from other nurses on here to help me figure out what I am doing. Let me give a little bit of background:
So I graduated in Ohio at a well-known nursing school with my BSN in December of 2014. By May of 2015 I landed a job at the Cleveland Clinic on a med-surg telemetry floor. Not my first choice, in fact, I've always hated med-surg, but was told time and time again to start there because you get such great experience, yada yada. I'm not saying what I've learned in the past 10-ish months hasn't been useful, but what it has most definitely done has made me want to quit nursing.
I am desperately looking for new jobs. I job hunt at home, I job hunt at work, I look into different degrees, I tell myself I'm just going to go work at a coffee shop (still a legitmate thought) and to hell with all the rest. I just don't know what to do. I am on days, part time (2 12s a week), and that has helped my stress, but I still have huge flare ups of IBS before a shift. I still feel as though I just want to quit without a back-up plan.
Despite my hours and hours of searching and applying to jobs, I have only just recently as I approach a year started to hear back from a few, 2 with interviews. The one interview was far too much commuting to the other side of Cleveland for me and constantly going to different locations. Not OK with that. The second one was through Fresenius and it's for a chronic dialysis position. Now, I don't have a huge passion for dialysis but I do think it's very interesting, I like the idea of being in a little bit of a "manager" role, and the hours are better in terms of rarely any Sundays and no Christmas, Thanksgiving, or New Years Day shifts. But I am so afraid that I go into this job (the offer may or may not come tomorrow) and decide I still hate being a nurse.
I would love to do case management or nursing informatics or some sort of support role but the problem I am finding is that no where will hire a nurse with under 3 years experience into those roles. I have also thought about outpatient surgery and truly believe that would be my favorite kind of nursing as I've done it in the past as just an unlicensed helper (stocking rooms and setting up sterile fields when in school). Another thing I've looked into is holistic nursing or just doing nursing vlogs/working from home in some way.
Honestly, I'm a fairly "lazy" person. I really enjoy my free time. With stuff like IBS and dermatitis that is triggered by stress this past year has not been enjoyable in nursing. And I know what a lot of you are thinking, why didn't you research nursing more? Why didn't you know it would be like this?... I think I was just dumb, young, and hopeful. My school constantly told us we would have no trouble getting jobs. We were told over and over how great nursing is and that you can do "anything" with it. But unless you know a guy who knows a guy it feels like majority have to get stuck with the sh*t. And I know nurses who looooove med-surg... but I am not one of them.
Thoughts?
PS. I love the people I work with. I love my manager. I have told her I am interested in going into something other than med-surg but haven't wanted to seem like a baby so haven't really told her the depths of how much I hate this job. And like I said, it's not the people at all. It's mostly the pain-seeking patients, dementia/Alzheimer patients who are fighters, the endless calls from the telemetry monitoring system who tell me ten times that my patient had a period of asystole but it was just artifact, doctors who won't return my pages, or family members who don't know the first thing about my job or who sneak in big macs to my diabetic patients and don't tell me until their blood glucose is 400. Sh*t like that just burns me up.
If you can get to the point where adapt and don't have that "brand-new-grad smell" anymore, it will become a lot easier.
I may think this because it's close to my bedtime (yes, I'm old) and I'm stupid tired, but that is one of the funniest things I've read all week. Next time I come across a new grad I'm going to smell them to see if there really is a brand-new-grad smell. I'll let you know if I get arrested or at the very least sent to HR.
My thoughts are.. you were lucky to land a position at the Cleveland Clinic. You have 10 months experience in med surg.. suck it up buttercup. Stop focusing on the annoying details that all nurses experience.. continue to gain that all important one to two years of experience. THEN you can move on.
"Buttercup" poof...... I hate that term. Just saying........
I see this (HH) recommended a lot on this site, I do wonder how many of those who recommend it have worked in it.
LOL - I wonder the same..
People do not realize that while it is lovely to just have one patient at a time, the amount of documenting especially related to admit/re-cert/discharge is huge huge huge and more than I ever documented per patient before. They do not realize that time management and excellent organizational skills are the most essential part of nursing plus your skills need to be up to par - you are alone.
And to top it all - you may end up in houses / places/ trailers that are so dirty /bugs/ terrible that you can not sit down...
Productivity !!!
The insufficient organization of the agencies and the bullying of management "to just take one more patient" for the day...
I think that people do not realize how home care has changed. It is not like in the beginning of the 90 s when I had a community clinical for nursing school. In 1992 there was only a bit of paper charting and the nurse did not have that sick patient. The sick patient were in the hospital or other facility. Now you have really sick patients at home with all kind of problems from drains to new diabetes to what not. I even did port access and chemo in home care...
Not only that, with home health care you have to deal with many non-compliant patients ...in their HOMES. So the client or family can say or do anything.
I would rather work in a prison as a nurse. At least there you have correctional officers required to be present at all times with a patient!
Umm this sounds crazy, and not in the general trend of the thread, but have you thought about ICU?
It is NOT low stress, but the stress comes from a different source. Yes your patients are noncompliant, but that is what got them in ICU so unless they want to sign a DNR they darned better do what you tell them too. If families aren't behaving you can still kick them out, because "patient family centered care" still means the patient needs to be cared for. If someone tries to give my NPO patient food they are out of there. You need to be detail oriented. You need to know their whole history and apply it to their current situation. I have found that even though critical care nurses are "crusty" they excel in teamwork when it really matters.
Beyond the stress of having very sick patients, you can anticipate management increasing your workload, for example at my job we not only run CRRT but set up, tear down, and troubleshoot the sets. These patients used to be 1:1 but they are paired now. Also ethical issues can be difficult to deal with. But if you like the core of your job you will find it easier to deal with the sludge.
I actually have thought about ICU but I'm not sure since most of the starting jobs in ICU are for night shift. I could maybe go back to nights for the right position... but I was not a nice person when my sleep was messed up !
Still kickin' it on the med-surg floor but today is my one year and I am sending out a few resumes in hopes of finding something. The more I think about it, the more surgery or PACU is what I'm sure I want to go into. I enjoy the technological side of it, I enjoy the team aspect, I enjoy being able to have a problem that I can see and I can fix. If I'm able to get into an OR or surgical suite I am thinking of eventually doing RNFA in the future.
Have you thought of well baby nursery? Yeah, you'll still have stress and annoyances but drug seeking and combative is off the table!
Not all the time! Especially in the Cleveland area where we have usually no less than 10-12 withdrawl kids spread out between NICU and the nursery. They may not drug seek too much from you but the majority are a handful.
!
LeChien, BSN, RN
278 Posts
Home health case management