None of you will like what I have to say. But let me kick the hard truth to you. Honestly about 50% of people I talk to are in nursing school or are taking pre-reqs for nursing school. This is a major red flag for several reasons. If you have not noticed, nursing wages/benefits have been on the down trend.
Pension?? goodbye.
Crud 401k 403b plans hello. Raise? LOL "sorry hospital is working out financial issues, maybe next year".
Nevermind if you work for a community/SNF agency. Yet insurance companies, medicare derived/gov agencies, and anyone else from the top 1% will continue to blast the RN as "shortage" in order to drive drones of students into nursing schools pulling each others hair out on the way to land a seat. Proof of this is, let's see (ABSN ***** ADN, BSN, diploma, LPN/LVN bridge to RN programs, RN to BSN) Why do these different routes exist? To flood the RN market as fast as possible to drive the wage, need, and profession into the ground.
Let's look at our oh so loyal CNA's. If you can find one that isn't in nursing school to be a nurse, ask them how much they make?
Look at LPN's 20-30 years ago and look at them today??
Surely the ANA and other organizations treated them with respect. The RN is next, so make sure to support your local nursing agency so they can do nothing for you. So they can be paid off by organizations so powerful that no one can say no and "not have the power to stop a bill". So they can continue to cry nursing shortage when this is not true.
RNs today are treated like children and are required to demonstrate fundamental task and other skills in inservices which were designed for nothing else but cut throat. To place blame of UTI's and poor patient satisfaction on the nurse.
If you are an RN today, your only safety net is to become an APRN if you want to live comfortably but in several decades the APRN will be under attack just like the LPN had been an RNs currently are. "OH the aging population is going to need nurses" You really think so?
Nursing homes are shutting down and now elderly people live at home with "24 hour care takers" that get paid **** wages and do things only an RN should be doing. You don't think so? Wake up.
None of this is to say that I hate nursing. I love helping people who are mentally ill, suffering from dementia, sick, or on their death beds. It is when we do great things for them that my love for nursing shines. There aren't other people standing around to reward you for your great deeds.
When the family comes in the next day complaining about everything, they never had a chance to see how well their dying loved one was cared for. Your good deeds will never be rewarded, but in a safe place in your heart.
I am just here to open the eyes of people who are intelligent and looking for a new career. I think you may find better job security else where. Invest your time in classes and money else where. Nursing is honestly under great attack right now and the future is black.
Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
I shouldn't have to accept anxiety, crying, feeling incompetent and unsafe and frazzled just because someone thinks new nurses should expect to be treated like crap. .
YOU are the one who controls the anxiety, crying, feeling incompetent and frazzled. No one else is doing that to you. Those are the responses you are choosing.
Specializes in Tele/Interventional/Non-Invasive Cardiology.
YOU are the one who controls the anxiety, crying, feeling incompetent and frazzled. No one else is doing that to you. Those are the responses you are choosing.
YOU don't need to be rude. It seems like many nurses regardless of experience make the same choice. And I am not going to apologize for being a human with feelings. I am glad you are so put together that you can sound condescending.
YOU don't need to be rude. It seems like many nurses regardless of experience make the same choice. And I am not going to apologize for being a human with feelings. I am glad you are so put together that you can sound condescending.
She has a point, though. Even if a nurse is rude to you, you don't have to feel incompetent or frazzled. Your reactions are yours alone. While one person may cry because they feel worthless as a new nurse, another might view it as a learning experience and channel it as determination to do better.
Specializes in OR, Nursing Professional Development.
YOU don't need to be rude. It seems like many nurses regardless of experience make the same choice. And I am not going to apologize for being a human with feelings. I am glad you are so put together that you can sound condescending.
It goes with the saying from Eleanor Roosevelt: "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." How you react to what is said to you is within your control. Anxiety, crying, feeling incompetent, frazzled, or thinking that someone is being condescending is all in how you react to your interpretation of what is said/occurring.
And when they DO reach the bedside they don't understand why they have to work weekends. Surely the manager didn't really expect them to work NIGHTS (even though that offer letter specified night shift). And they can't possibly work CHRISTMAS! They have seven weddings to attend over the summer, so they can't be expected to work every other weekend. And what do you MEAN I can't have every Sunday off?
This is why I come to AN. This is something I don't experience. I know of one out of the 45 or 50 people in my cohort who is obnoxious like this. She misses clinical days and then whines about the instructors not setting up better experiences for her when she does deign to show up. She tried to be buddy-buddy with a patient care rep by talking about how badly she doesn't want to do bedside nursing and quizzing the woman on how to basically get her job. Poor stupid girl didn't realize that all the patient care reps are in those jobs because they were floor nurses for at least 5 years prior to moving positions. The pt care rep looked horrified when the girl raved on and on about hating bedside nursing .
Aside from her, none of my fellow students have delusions of grandeur. I'm going to be very glad to take a night shift weekends-only type job, and I'm not overly picky about which hospital floor it's on. Then again, I got hired as a UAP first so that I could know the reality of nursing and see if I'd love it before I spent a dime on nursing school. I chose an area where I knew I would have a job. One of the local hospital's floors is offering a $5k sign-on bonus. All of the big local area hospitals come and buy us last-semester students lunch and try to persuade us to come work for them. There actually IS a nursing shortage in my area.
It never said there was not a shortage. It stated "Assuming RNs continue to train at the current levels and accounting for new entrants andattrition, the RN supply is expected to grow by 952,000 full-time equivalents (FTEs) –from 2,897,000 FTEs in 2012 to 3,849,000 FTEs in 2025 – a 33 percent increasenationally.• The nationwide demand for RNs, however, is projected to grow by only 612,000 FTEs –from 2,897,000 FTEs in 2012 to 3,509,000 FTEs in 2025 – a 21 percent increase."
If you believe in your instinct that you can be a great nurse, then there's no use into stopping. You can be a great help in the community. Maybe let just focus on not going into not-credible schools.
Specializes in Ambulatory Care, LTC, OB, CCU, Occ Hth.
It goes with the saying from Eleanor Roosevelt: "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." How you react to what is said to you is within your control. Anxiety, crying, feeling incompetent, frazzled, or thinking that someone is being condescending is all in how you react to your interpretation of what is said/occurring.
We are also in an age where bullying and incivility has become out of hand. All of us as communicators are responsible for the messages (all of them) we send. While one person can only feel inferior with their own consent, it also means there's someone standing there with that message loaded with potential. It's like saying someone calling you ugly makes you feel bad because you chose to hear them. In this scenario the real point is that someone chose to call you ugly to begin with. The malice shouldn't exist. Mrs. Roosevelt wasn't wrong, you do relinquish (or perhaps it's just taken?) a bit of your own power when you're bullied, but her line of thinking keeps the focus away from the real problem.
As for the majority of the posts in this thread, I feel like some people didn't get what they bargained for in nursing, and they can't go through the motions like maybe if they were an office worker. As nurses we see people at the best and worst moments of their lives, we see how cruel people can be to one another, and we see how much some people hate themselves. That's a lot to carry, and you can't do it gracefully (certainly not cheerfully) if you do not 100% love nursing as it is and that includes bedside, body fluids, weakness, pain, emotions, life, death, and fluctuating pay.
Specializes in Ambulatory Care, LTC, OB, CCU, Occ Hth.
I want to chime in on the point that volunteering should be considered as a entry qualification to nursing programs. I don't disagree there. Something I see everyday and have seen just reading through this thread is nurses who lack compassion because they never learned it or have forgotten how to feel it. Compassion is integral to nursing. Without it, you're basically "tending" to someone. Volunteering either as a prerequisite or requirement during the program might serve to stimulate some compassion. Or maybe we all need to step back and make a point to actively cultivate compassion rather than run the drills and get down to business. The patients are people and their feelings matter regardless of whether we like them or agree with their life choices.
I want to chime in on the point that volunteering should be considered as a entry qualification to nursing programs. I don't disagree there. Something I see everyday and have seen just reading through this thread is nurses who lack compassion because they never learned it or have forgotten how to feel it. Compassion is integral to nursing. Without it, you're basically "tending" to someone. Volunteering either as a prerequisite or requirement during the program might serve to stimulate some compassion. Or maybe we all need to step back and make a point to actively cultivate compassion rather than run the drills and get down to business. The patients are people and their feelings matter regardless of whether we like them or agree with their life choices.
I won't lie. I haven't volunteered before. But I do see it is becoming more and more necessary bc everyone and their mama is studying to "do nursing". I am already in nursing school, and to be honest, am more in love with it than I was before I got in bc I didn't have a real idea of what nursing entailed until then. Fortunately for me, I grew to love becoming a nurse. But for more students that don't have a clue, another spot in the program is lost to someone who ends up stepping down bc they don't want to do the "grunt work" as one of my friends in the passed described it when she explained her reasons for changing her field of study. There are ppl who really want this, but lose it to someone who doesn't even know what they are getting into. It's very unfortunate. I do think making volunteer work a requirement would be a great idea bc it gives them a reality check on the field and not the Greys Anatomy version that's made up in their minds. I got my CNA certification 5 years ago and it led me to the conclusion I didn't want to work in geriatrics. I had my son and that experience led me to my interest in pediatric/OBGYN/L&D. But I'm so early in the game and am excited to see where my true calling is. I'm just happy nursing is what I want. I'd hate spending so much time, money, and effort to end up in the wrong field.
Newish nurse here. This thread is… interesting. I agree with many points the OP made- if nursing wants to continue to be respected as a profession and to elevate in the level of respect it already receives, we need to do more about the image we portray. My thoughts:
The NCLEX should NOT allow so many tries. Like the Bar Exam, 3 and done, or at the very least, remediation- and more than just a 1 week refresher course. I know some states do this, but not enough. I think it's crazy that people can take the test 5, 6 times in some places without any required review courses. Not doing well doesn't mean the person would make a bad nurse at all; however, it does mean show that the person in not correctly utilizing the nursing process when thinking about scenarios concerning basic safety of the patient. I think if we had a national standard in place, like many other licensing exams, it would be easier to have more compact states, and help keep us from the current glut†of nursing entrants of which the OP speaks.
Nursing has too many acronyms, and they confuse people. I see it with patients all the time- Diploma/BSN/MSN/ADN/ASN/DNP (I realize these ones are necessary); NP/APRN/ARNP/CNP/CNS; LVN vs LPN/PN; CNA/STNA/NAs/PCA/UAPs (how it was referenced in my Iggy Textbook). We need some nationally standardized uniform terms.
No one should have to be a CNA prior to being eligible for nursing school. That makes so many assumptions about one's life and could possibly prevent them from their life's true calling (Nursing IS a calling in my opinion), because of factors outside of their control. Med students and PAs don't have any similar requirement and neither should we, in my humble opinion. I did and still do volunteer a ton, but I'm not sure I'd make it a requirement either, as life circumstances have a huge effect on that as well. I do believe there needs to be more stringent requirements to stop the huge influx into the profession, I just don't know what those requirements should be. I apologize for that, because I typically cringe at the shooting down of possible solutions without having alternatives of my own.
Nursing schools shouldn't be allowed to keep taking people's money on the premise of some nursing shortage. I live in an area very saturated with nursing programs, and it simply isn't true. People go to school, expecting to get jobs right away, because of what schools have sold them, and they end up unemployed for months or longer (I've seen it on AN often). Many students in my city got screwed when they went to a school attached to a popular hospital, with the promise that if they did well, they'd all have a job waiting for them at the end. Only 3 students got hired (and WAY more than that did well). I feel the same way about NP schools and preceptors. Schools shouldn't be allowed to keep letting all these students into their NP programs, knowing that they can't really accommodate them. The whole preceptor process needs to be revamped.
I am very blessed, as a newer nurse, to be working the day shift at a premier hospital in the city (same city I went to school in). I did do nights for like a month first. I HAPPILY work every 3rd weekend, and often, if I see a weekend is down 2 nurses, I'll come in for a few hours or sometimes a whole shift and help my fellow nurses out. I don't mind our holiday schedule either. I'm often up to my elbows in poop (C. Diff anyone?), and I don't mind it, because I got that experience in clinical too, and I knew how nursing would be. Just yesterday a patient yanked their THIRD IV of the week out and got blood everywhere, and their PEGtube sprayed me with FiberSource at the same time. Good times. . I haven't experienced any bullying from anyone. I call physicians, social workers, lab, pharmacists and tele all day long, and I guess I'm fortunate because I've gotten nothing but respect.
Like another poster, I honestly only know of one nurse in my cohort who had unrealistic expectations as a new grad- what… not-so-bright person honestly goes into an industry that's active 24/7, 365 and DOESN'T expect to work weekends or nights? Only one person in class was like this. This person was at the top of the class but never wanted to get "dirty" with patients. They wouldn't dream of giving a bed-bath (always said that's the PCA's job") let alone dealing with incontinence of bowel and bladder. Well, said person's father is an influential surgeon in the city, so they had a job before even passing the NCLEX, heck before even passing the exit HESI. :-/ But I can assure you, they were in the minority in my class. Most went into this wanting to work and with a compassion for people.
I keep noticing the posts about new grads and decent pay. I think we ALL should be able to get decent pay, even new grads. The nights/weekends/holidays thing? We should be reasonably compensated.
Examples from my current job include that the weekend and holiday differentials are the same, at $1.25/hour. $1.25 times 12 hours is $15 for the entire shift. Yes, you read that right. And then management wonders why they have trouble staffing the weekends and now mandate holidays! Well, dumb pieces of ****, I would be happy to work weekends for a $4-$5/hour diff, which would be a lot less money than having to bribe us with incentives, and I would be happy to work holidays for time and a half. I would be happy to let all the people with kids/families/whatever have Christmas off and make less money. I'm all for those bonuses and being able to save, and if the people with kids don't like money, that's fine with me. I have always worked places that are open 365 days a year. I happily worked my minimum wage job at the movie theater on Christmas for time and a half. I even signed up for DOUBLES because I enjoyed the extra money! I happily worked my $10/hour hotel job on Christmas for time and a half, and my gosh, it really impacted my check! It was GREAT working Christmas Eve and Christmas Day!
However, I will absolutely complain and be obnoxious about working on Christmas, with a BASE wage of more than $20/hour, for an extra $15 for the whole shift. I'm sorry, but the way some hospitals pay their employees is just messed up. At $6/hour for time and a half, that comes out to $3 extra PER HOUR. If I worked 12 hours on Christmas at a $6/hour job, that comes to $36 extra dollars a shift, vs. the $15 extra dollars a shift I make now. I literally made more incentive pay when I made $6/hour for working on Christmas than I make for working as a nurse. Does anyone think that's fair? Maybe all the complaints about nursing pay and incentives are rooted in the fact that minimum wage workers are given more incentives to come to work than some nurses are. Obviously, we are just cogs in the machine and nobody values us, but they could at least pretend that we're worth more than workers at a job that aren't even required to graduate high school!
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Ruby Vee, BSN
17 Articles; 14,051 Posts
YOU are the one who controls the anxiety, crying, feeling incompetent and frazzled. No one else is doing that to you. Those are the responses you are choosing.