PCT jobs harder than they once were?

[funtimes]

I heard a couple RNs talking at work the other night. They were really experienced RNs who mainly do vascular procedures like PICC lines throughout the hospital, and they were discussing a tech who wound up with a bloody nose after getting punched by a patient, AFTER having a urinal poured on her by a different patient(what a shift eh). Both had started out as Nurse assistants in a hospital over 30 years ago.

According to both of them, the patient care has gotten ten times harder than when they first started out in Nursing, and the workload for techs in particular has gotten a lot worse. They said they feel so bad for the techs they see on the floors and don't remember it ever being as bad as it is now.

I thought it was mainly just THIS hospital, which is notorious for being a great place to work as an RN and a horrible place to work as a tech(so say the RNs who once worked there as techs). Is this pretty much the case everywhere, has the job for techs just gotten much harder than it once was? Is this because of the bad economy and the fact there are so many more people applying for every tech job?

I feel like the attitude is the techs are looked at like horses, and they just ride them to death and switch to another one. A new tech I was orienteering worked in the corporate world before deciding to do a career change into nursing and work as a tech while in school. She was honest, and said the job seems so much more stressful and difficult than what she expected and worse than anything shed experienced before. I think the tech with the bloody nose freaked her out. I tried to comfort her by telling her I've never had a urinal poured on me and been punched in the face during the same shift.

[Aeb94]

I was a PCT for around eight months. I was a semester into nursing school and was excited to start working inside a hospital and care for people. Unfortunately, this job became too much for me to handle mentally and physically. I had on average 15 patients per shift, working in a cardiac step down unit, it’s a lot. I thought the nurses would help if I needed to turn someone in bed or take an unsteady patient to the bathroom. Unfortunately that was not the case. Getting the nurses on my floor to help me was like pulling teeth. I would sprint around that floor for 12 hours, most of the time with no lunch break because I was so busy. I would be in the middle of bathing an incontinent patient, or changing a patient and the nurses would page me to go get someone a glass of water and throw an attitude when I couldn’t do it. It was especially bad on night shift weekends, the nurses refused to help me. I threw my back out multiple times turning patients that were way too heavy for me to turn on my own. I starved myself for 12+ hours because of my workload, and was chewed out by the nurses when I was running slightly behind when they could see me literally running down the hall to get my duties done. My nursing supervisor always gave me good feedback and patients adored having me as their tech, I was wonderful at my job and a hard worker. Everyone said how on top of everything I was, but at what cost to my physical and mental health? I was so good at my job it started to wear me down in a way I’ve never been worn down before. Another issue was the scheduling. I was hired to work night weekends, which I was prepared for. I know adjusting to night shift is difficult. The issue was my schedule was constantly flipped from day to night and night to day. My body was so out of whack I could never sleep and there were times I was up for almost 48 hours straight. I developed severe anxiety from this job. I would sit in my car before my shift and have terrifying anxiety attacks. I would scream, cry, not be able to breathe, vomit, it was actual hell. This job was supposed to Segway into me getting a RN position when I graduated nursing school. Unfortunately this experience caused me a great deal of mental illness issues and I had to quit and receive help. It also led me to quit nursing school and pursue another career. When my nursing supervisor found out I was quitting she didn’t understand because I worked so hard and I would’ve made an excellent nurse, but because of this experience it completely pushed me away from the nursing profession. I know there are wonderful nurses out there who love their patients and are willing to help. Unfortunately, I did not know many of them. I hope my story sheds light on the workload many PCTs deal with on a daily basis and how it is burning out good employees.