Hey everyone! I am a fairly new nurse. I have almost 2 years of experience. I work in rehabilitation/ therapy hospital nursing and hate it. I work 12+ hour shifts, night shift. Of course when I first started I was nervous and scared. I had a wonderful preceptor that trained me well and now I am totally comfortable with the computer work and charting we do. But I absolutely hate my job. Its nothing like they described when I hired in. We were told the patients were able to do therapy 3 hours a day, 5 days a week and they usually discharged home. Total LIE. Many of our patients are brought in by the liaisons to fill a bed so the liaisons can get their bonuses. Night shift gets the crap end of the stick. We always have 3-5 more patients than day shift and way less staff which makes our jobs much more difficult. Day shift usually has 4-5 nurses on the floor and at least 3 techs plus all the nurses in management offices to "help" if needed (which, yeah right, like that would happen). At night we maybe have 2-4 nurses and maybe 2 techs if we are lucky. Usually one works half a shift or we sometimes dont have any techs at all. With the patient to nurse ratio on nights being 10-12:1, its difficult to care for these patients when sometimes 7 or 8 of them are total care. Recently, we have had many nurses and techs quit especially from night shift. I have been moved to the other night shift since an RN quit, which is fine, but I am now the only RN on the med cart and we are required to do all assessments on patients at night as well as all the other dozens of tasks required. We dont have respiratory therapy or wound care at night so we do all that as well. LPNs can pass medicine only according to our policy, so RNs have to do most of their tasks as well. Obviously the LPNs dont leave this job, but 90% of our RNs are completely worn out. I do a good job and do get complimetented by patients and even had great scores on our annual evaluation recently, but some patients wear me out and I dread going into work every time I have to work. We are completely short staffed so me and the other night shift RN are working crazy schedules with little to no breaks. Recently my manager mentioned that I may start training to be charge nurse to rotate with another RN. I told her that would be fine, but I really dont even want to do it. I think it looks good that I will attempt to take on a leadership type role, but I hate my job so much that I dont want to stay. My 1 year contract was up in September, so I'm not required to stay anymore. I've applied to some other jobs but this is my only nursing experience. I'm working on my BSN now and will graduate May 2019 so I think that will help but I feel like I've wasted my time majoring in nursing. Some days are better than others but no day is a good day. When I get 9 patients for my shift instead of 12 I'm happy. It's so much med-surg/ ICU/ psych work and I've gotten some experience but nobody in management seems to care except for our manager. She has been trying to get staff in but cant. I cry almost every day I have to go to work and sometimes tear up on my lunch break if I get one. I recently got married 2 weeks ago and being on opposite shifts as my husband, we have barely seen each other. We are going to try and have a baby soon as well and I know I cant handle this stress if I do get pregnant. Most of our patients have psych issues, which I can handle, but alot of them are so mean and lazy. And I'm not talking about ones that really are incapable of caring for themselves. I'm talking about ones that are mod independent or minimal assist that just wont try to do anything for themselves. I feel like I get taken advantage of sometimes because I'm laid back and dont get bent out of shape but its taking such a toll on me. I know some may say I need to find a different job but sometimes I question if I should even do nursing anymore. I feel defeated. I get along great with my coworkers but most of our techs and even some nurses are lazy and don't do their job well even if we have said something to them so that leads to being the nurses fault if something isn't done. And I know it is my responsibility to make sure everything gets done but it's hard with 12 patients and everything I have to do. I'm very organized and great with time management and feel like I do my job well but management never seems to care about the good that the nurses do, only the bad. Not that I want a gold star, but it's nice to feel appreciated every now and then. I know this was a lot to read but I needed to vent! Thanks to whoever reads this and I'll be very appreciative for any advice or comments you post! Sometimes I think it's good to just get something off our chests!!
