Now I understand why there is a nursing shortage

[kendel]

I am a new nurse and I am on orientation now for almost 4 weeks at the hospital. I work on a med surge floor.

I am given 8 patients to give medications, assessments, etc etc.

The work is overwhelming and from what i am being told, its like that every where.

i work 12 hour shifts and i cant even eat my lunch for 30 minutes in peace , some one always needs me

I some times feel like walking out

i am starting to question my self.. what the hell did i get my self into

I personally like pt care but my god, you cant give good pt care with so much overwhelming paper work and every one pulling and tugging on you at the same time and try to be accurate about giving medications.

they want me to be the nurse, the secretary, the Aide, and much more.

when the pts need to be cleaned up and you try to find a nurses aide, they disappear so I clean up the pts my self.

what has nursing become

I see why nurses quit so fast

[kendel]

Gee, we're easy to find... just look for the closed doors. 99.9% of the time we're in a room doing patient care.

My problem is when I need a nurse to report abnormal vitals, patient needs meds, etc. I can't find the nurses...

thats because we the nurses are in the other room

lol

[Valerie Salva, BSN, RN]

i can't help but blame the nursing programs. when i went to school i new EXACTLY what floor nursing entailed. i was not the least bit surprised when i graduated. my program and our instructors were very realistic and they told us that we would have 6-12 patients on a med surg floor. for that reason alone alot of my classmates chose critical care areas (ICU/ER). i just don't understand why so many new grads are surprised. what was clinical like?? did the nurses only have 2-3 patients??? i doubt it. i am not pointing a finger at you personally,its just that this seems to be the norm and i am wondering what goes wrong in between clinicals and graduation. i remember being in clinical and thinking "there is no way in *ell that i would work med surg" i absolutely hated it for the reasons you mentioned and i have only done ER with the exception of being floated to the floor. which wasn't too bad once i became a more experienced nurse. you also have to consider the hospital and their support. is there a good new grad program in place?? do they have a good nurse/patient ratio? some hospitals pay more because the environment is horrible and they know that so they try to make up by paying a little more. sometimes you have to take a pay cut to have peace of mind. i wish you luck in what you decide. don't give up and don't give in. you deserve to benefit from working hard for your license.

I recently participated in a thread on the pre-nursing forum- People who are not even in nursing school yet were posting about how nursing is "lower stress" than "most other fields."

We all know that is a highly inaccurate statement. When I replied saying so, the pre-nurses let me know in no uncertain terms that my opinions and advice were not wanted.

I guess they'll find out the hard way.

[gonzo1, ASN, RN]

in my nursing clinicals we were assigned one pt and each clinical was about 3 hours long 2 times per week. obviously not reality based at all. I work 12s and never get a break. I love the job but really need my days off to recuperate. I'm always wondering how long my body can take it. So far 5 years and counting

[pagandeva2000, LPN]

I am an LPN working in a hospital clinic, and people tend to believe it is a choice position. I do admit that the margin of error is less than med-surg, but, it is chaotic all the same. Many clinics do not have a room for the nurse to provide teaching and administer medications-they are swinging from room to room like monkeys. The nurses have rooms in the clinic I work for, but, when I float, I am usually insane in minutes.

Because of the high volume of patients we serve, we constantly have patients, aides, doctors and administrators banging on our doors asking why we are taking so long, patients to be transferred to the emergency room or direct admits. While I do get holidays and weekends off, I am finding that I spend more time sleeping at home than enjoying my life. I was not blind to nursing, really, but being in the foxholes with them rather than on the side as I was as an aide, I am sometimes blown away and overwhelmed. I developed plantar fasciitis, am bone tired and started taking Zoloft a few weeks ago to decrease my anxiety. I do wonder how long I can take it. What is good is that our nurses in my area do pull together most of the time to help each other, offer a hug and supportive words, but gee whiz...

[Ms Kylee]

I think the aides and the nurses are run ragged. It is crazy. I graduate in May 2008 and work as an LNA. I plan to go to med surge for a year and then to the ICU. Hopefully having 2 patients in the ICU is not as crazy as the medsurge floors.

Tonight I sure was. Between the patient who's family thinks she's the only one on the floor, the pooper, and the stripper, I was tired at 4:00... and I started at 3. Fortunately, when I needed the nurses, they were right there for me, even when I had to report the abnormal vitals and blood sugars. It was nice to not have to track anyone down.

[txspadequeenRN, BSN, RN]

if i had a nickel for every time i felt this way over the course of my nursing career ; there would be no need to play the texas lottery...lol

tonight i sure was. between the patient who's family thinks she's the only one on the floor, the pooper, and the stripper, i was tired at 4:00... and i started at 3.

[TheCommuter, BSN, RN]

We all know that is a highly inaccurate statement. When I replied saying so, the pre-nurses let me know in no uncertain terms that my opinions and advice were not wanted.

Students or pre-nurses who do not want to hear the advice and opinions of experienced nurses are, in my humble opinion, making a clownish and idiotic mistake that might haunt them later on down the line.

[CITCAT]

Brave to me is not working yourself out of your good health..that's insane. Most rational people know their limit and know when their body/mind is being screwed due to being overworked. Whatever happened to standing up for yourself? Where are the great preceptors that do not eat their young and try to push them out of nursing? We need nurses..and that will never change! However, as soon as a new nurse hits the floor, the experienced ones turn their noses up at the new nurse as if they have never endured the breaking in phase as a new RN. Being tough does not mean that you tolerate bs from the employer (who does not care anything about you but money) handing out theses insane patient loads that are unsafe for any new nurse.

Believe me, no school/instructor in any country is going to let each of their clinical students have 8-12 patients because that is deemed "real world" because I am sure that their license would be in jeopardy! That is way to risky for any instructor/student. This would only further the shortage of nurse instructors of colleges even.

Unfortunately, there are not enough nurses let alone nursing instructors. Remember, there are so many other hospitals that don't work you like a chicken with your head cut off (unsafe). There are even nurse jobs outside of the hospital especially correlating with the amount of education one has.

:oi have had the experience of being looked down upon as a nurse by older nurses ,when i started a new job , I ve had older nurses tease me,call me names belittle me to the point I almost had a nervous breakdown , their insenisitivity had made my life misable and iam a nurse with a functional handicapp soits isnt always the young new nurses who have to endure this belitlement by those who think they are something when they are nothing but terrible role models I have always took the nurse who was precepting with me encourageing,uplifting positive reienforcements becuase I know how it feels and I have been a nurse for 12 years and I dont thinkof myself as a know it all . And I am sure youll agree Why cant we treat other nurses as our dearly loved sisters or brothers where has the nurse love gone?

[st4wb3rr33sh0rtc4k3]

Try where I work. A nurse from the previous shift apparently put medications in a sippy cup for a four-year-old. When I went to give him meds I had to teach the parents that it wasn't a good idea to do this. I thought maybe she might of given it to the parents and they put it in the cup. When I tried to give him medications I got bitten, punched, and kicked at. When, I dumped the cup out that is all I got out of it was Robitussin and Tylenol. It smelt like an alcoholic drink!

When I told her about it, she flipped. Saying there is no way that the patient missed all his meds, because it must of been something else in the cup. Makes me wonder why I became a nurse. I didn't know I would be there every night fixing other nurse's mistakes. It really makes me feel like crap when I get treated this way, too.

[xxgreenfirexx]

Well, Valerie if it makes you feel any better I am in the prenursing area of things and I would much rather listen to people who have experience. And my hubby and I were truck drivers for 5 years. Most people don't know how stressful and hard it is to be a truck driver, but it is and we regularly heard from others how easy and stress free it is (and of course we were told this, by people who had never driven a semi before in their lives). I was also a governmental contractor and a special ed teacher which all had their own high levels of stress as well.....

I recently participated in a thread on the pre-nursing forum- People who are not even in nursing school yet were posting about how nursing is "lower stress" than "most other fields."

We all know that is a highly inaccurate statement. When I replied saying so, the pre-nurses let me know in no uncertain terms that my opinions and advice were not wanted.

I guess they'll find out the hard way.

[mikethern]

I wish every nursing school was so forthcoming. It would weed out applicants a lot faster so that only the truly brave hearted souls that could stick it out for the long haul would be going to nursing school. It would cause some hardship in the workforce at first but after a while the turnover would be lower and we might actually make some headway with nursing and our healthcare system.

Good post. If college students really knew what nursing is like, there would be much fewer applicants to nursing school. I work only 12 hours a week because I dislike nursing. I am wasting my degree.

[ilmbg]

I have not worked in a few years, but it seems to be the same ol'.. you bring back thememories of frustration that most nurses feel- sometimes nursing is like a glorified waitress. Paula- I hear so much good from other California nurses- not just you! I wish other states would start to open their eyes. I always wanted to go see northern California- beautiful pictures- you make it sound like heaven!! 8 patients? That would be the norm here too, this was the first time I had ever worked med-surg, and I missed the units I worked on in other states- you cannot give good care when you have too many patients. And do housekeeping jobs at the same time... In one hospital in Florida, we did not have either housekeeping or aides during night shift- any night shift! If we discharged a patient, we either left the rooms for the day housekeeping, or if it was our last room, the Rn's cleaned the rooms. In a couple L&D hospitals, the nurses cleaned the rooms- mopped floors and had the patient also! I have worked in good places, also. Why do we not put a stop to it? Because so many are single mom's who cannot afford to get fired or quit when this is the job she weht to college for, and it is about the best paying job that a mom can do. The hospitals know it, and most have no care for their staff. Paula- I am curious- in Federal hospitals- VA, IHS- what are the ratios there? I hear of VA around the country having so poor staffing- does that make California VA a better hospital than aroung the country?