Truth_be-told

Do you step in and help the floor nurses when they are swamped or burned out? Are you asking them to do things that you know full well that you yourself are not capable of doing?? Do you take long breaks while your floor nurses don't have a second to spare? Do you eat food, talk on your cell phone, and sit in your office with all these creature comforts while those who work the floor are constantly threatened or bullied by you for doing the same because or your title? If you are honest and answered "yes" to any of the above, then do not act so shocked when your staff hates you. Lead by example. The arrogance of most "managers" never ceases to amaze me.

The bottom feeding facility where I work is so horrible that they can't get any sane person to stay there. It is not uncommon for a new orientee to say they are 'going on their lunch breaks" the first day and never come back. So I can't call in because that means if one of the management slave drivers has to take the keys and actually do some real, physical work by working the floor, they will get even by writing you up, harassing you, or getting you terminated for having the audacity to get sick or injured. I have to go to work no matter what

We bottle in a great deal of stress and pressure and have very few people to talk to about it. It is tempting to vent on FB but seeing your employers like to spy on you and think they have the right to check up on your facebook account, be well advised to post under an alias like I do. Different name, city, age, etc. If you are job searching, deactivate your account. Set your privacy settings to "friends only" so your managers and employers cannot see how much you hate them or suggest that they step in and help out on the floor more often. Asking them to help or asking to be treated fairly are 2 sure fire ways to get yourself harassed or fired in this profession.

why do you presume they are 'practical nurses'? I worked at a job where i ran circles around the almighty RNs and most sure cop an ego problem about that extra year of college. Are you sure you aren't projecting yourself of some self anointed genius because in the long run, having the money to afford one extra year does not translate to being a brain surgeon vs a janitor. Give me a well seasoned C student LPN with common sense over some of these supposedly impressive RNs that were book smart but were substandard, even dangerous floor nurses. That extra year of school that in many cases your sugar daddy or that wealthy father or mother could buy by no means should place you on some pedestal where you or your ego feels threatened by some 'glorified nurse's aid', as many of you call LPNs.

I get them all the time. Just because I hate management people and the self anointed government geniuses that hyper regulate us and tie our hands does not affect my focus. The sick, injured, crippled, and dying who entrust their well being to me. I don't work for the company, the corporation, the government, etc etc. I work for the people. 'You saved my mother's life', 'I am so glad you are here', 'Nobody else knows what they aqe doing', 'I feel safe knowing you are here', etc etc. That's because i listen to them, talk to them, get to know them, become friends with them, and bring them comfort and happiness. They are what drives me. But that is not how the omniscient government thinks. They have this foolish notion that the quality of care can be measured by the never ending redundant and sendseless paperwork we do, rather than by patient and family satisfaction feedback and surveys. So the best nurses and caregivers can't maximize their very limited time making people happy and keeping them safe, content, and comfortable, we have our hands tied and our effectiveness minimized by meeting government demands for reimbursement, because their budgets are drying up and they place a priority over health, human services, social programs, and safety nets over with warfare, violence, and empire building. In between the losing battle where guns will win out over butter, I maintain my focus on those we took an oath or otherwise should be seving...those in need. The sick, disabled, crippled, and dying. What a chance to advance the better side of yourselves and to give to others unselfishly until that is taken away from us or the ever dwindling funds are taken away or stolen from us to fund violence, killing, and warfare

First thing I do is shut my cell phone off, so the lazy, slave driving management folks can't harass or threaten me to come in if the floor doesn't have coverage. It is my time to have a short break, they of all people have the energy to fill in seeing they did nothing but bark out orders demanding we do more and more work that they themselves know they are incapable of doing. They will do anything short of first degree murder to avoid having to push the cart, deal with the stress and the liability that come with actually having to do hard physical work for the patients and answer to their families.....along with all the lab results, new orders, new admits, complaints, and those inevitable incident reports, sometimes 10 pages long of redundant and senseless documentation, gobbling up hours of your time and essentially treating you like you are some criminal being badgered by some obnoxious prosecuting attorney (the state or the government) for murder because you cannot be everywhere at once, we do not have xray vision and see through walls, nor can we walk on water or leap tall buildings in a single bound. Once the management slave drivers get that cushy, comfy office or management job, most loathe having to work the floor and will get indignant when they have to row with the rest of us slaves. If they suspect you are the reason why they had to get off their leather chairs in their air conditioned, sterile cubicles where they spend the day talking on the phone, surfing the internet, or finding yet more ways to create more paperwork for us that work the floor while they eat food but forbid the floor nurses from sneaking a pop, coffee, or a snack, they will find a way to extract their revenge. So first item on the menu of having rare time to yourself, shut off the cell phone. If they yap and whine about trying to call you, tell them your dog ate it, you dropped it, or aliens stole it when they tried to abduct you but you valiantly fought them off, etc. If we are not paid to be on call, we have no obligation to be some slave to our cell phones. We are abused enough so this is where we should draw a line in the sand. The top dog where I am enslaved has his or her cell phone automatically go to voicemail when they are off the job, so use people like that as your role model. Next, get a cold glass, bottle, or gallon of your favorite beverage and either go out to your favorite restaurant (Thai food is the bomb). After you wake up from 5 days of torture and being abused and harassed to the point of exhaustion, relax in your bath, hot tub, or garden and with your phone off, enjoy the flowers as they say, and look forward to dining out at your favorite hang, Enjoy the company of the one you love or are close with and cuddle and enjoy each other's company on Saturday night. Fall asleep to soft music. Sunday. Just when you start to recuperate, you are bummed because you know Monday is coming, but seize the moment. Get something to grill outside, have your friends come over, get a cold glass, bottle or several gallons of your favorite beverage and have pool parties (backyard or table pool or both), play loud music, be sure to anger your neighbors whom you don't like anyways, enjoy every waking second knowing as the evening wears into night that the dream is ending, the nightmare will start will the sound of that alarm clock on Monday. The alarm goes off, you sit in bed, your back, knees, and legs still sore from running up and down hard floors for 40 hours, but not as bad so you don't roll back and forth in pain but not as much agony as you did after your 40 hours, wondering if you can call in and have a blessed and well deserved 3 day weekend (you can't, because the management people will get even with you if they have to work the floor). You watch the clock and jump up to take your shower at the last minute, and while travelling into work you laugh at the irony that you should be travelling away from a living nightmare but you don't want to be "tardy". As you get closer to work, the feelings of dread and apprehension well up, making your heart race and making you feel like having projectile emesis. I pop my prilosec and hypertensions meds with a bottled water that I have ready along with the scrubs I laid out the night before. Enter the doorway, that stench of omnipresent bodily wastes hits you but you learned to ignore it with the physical pain you are about to endure. Walk down the hallway to the nurse's desk, and the slave drivers, the management people are just waiting for you to show up and before you can so much as take your coat off, pounce on you and start nipping at your heels about how you didn;t do this, you need to do that, and of course, more paperwork along with the threats and intimidation. You need your job, so you have to sit back and take this from people who who no shame in torturing you to do things that they themselves cannot and never could do, but they get paid more and don't have to work hard, so they shamelessly take the check and go home.....on time, no weekends, holidays off, etc etc . That is how Monday starts off after a weekend off. Lather, rinse, and repeat and after any set amount of time, you have millions of stressed out, over worked, under paid, seldomly appreciated nurses. And so that is the life of your typical weekend off floor nurse, truth be told. Anyone who claims otherwise is a liar or suffers from some metal condition where they like to be exploited and abused, or they are management people pretending to be like us floor saves. Don't kid yourselves otherwise

Such a sad day when the government sides with management over the employees/labor who are veritably tortured by them. Toss in a good dose of government hyper regulation, and you have the perfect recipe for a stressed out, burned out workforce. A person can only take so much before they just quit. And the government expects labor to just idly sit back and take the abuse. Even sadder, all this frivolous and redundant documentation to "cover your backs", time eating and never ending paperwork that take away precious time spent on the floor doing hands on work and other things that really make a difference inour patient's lives.. Management is out to make a profit, so short staffing, cutting wages by harassing seasoned veterans and hiring in fresh grads is becoming common place. Why doesn't the government allow us, the ones who break our backs doing the actual work, to report employers and management for dangerous staffing levels, harassing older nurses and running them out or terminating them to save labor costs by hiring in new graduates, something that amounts to age discrimination and therefore is unconstitutional? They are not above the law and need to be held accountable as well.

You could not be more correct. If a female graduate in some male dominated profession was treated the way I was or have been trying to get a career, say law enforcement, I would be have been awarded millions many times over for 1/100,000,000 of the discrimination i had to go through both getting through nursing school and trying to gain employment. It is supposed to be enshrined in the US Constitution against discrimination based on gender, yet this supposed right is routinely violated and there are no checks or means to enforce this. Voice your grievances against what is FLAGRANT violations of your supposed Constitutional rights, and you will be brushed aside or told you are 'too sensitive' as there are virtually no protections against this raping of your rights. Trying to get a lawyer to represent you, when there is no money for these bloodsuckers to make, is like wiggling your toes at a hurricane. Never going to happen, and is hard to prove. Just reflect on this. How many male nurses have you encountered, in say, hospice?? In my several decades of experience, not ONE MALE NURSE. I applied at one hospice place, seasons hospice, but the 'talent recruiter', told me they were seeking other candidates. I have Bachelor's degree in education as well as a two year associate's degree in respiratory therapy and they were 'actively seeking other candidates'. I still have the rejection voice mail from a certain Stacey and have been tempted to post it on youtube. Those of you who work in the field, how many male nurses have you seen in the hospice field? Well if you are honest and have any integrity, you would be lying if you saw any, perhaps one or more. So don't poo poo male nurses who are the last ones hired and the first ones fired. Discrimination is an ugly 2 way street which only affects male nurses because we have no protections and people think we exaggerate or whatever so the flagrant abuses against our supposed rights are routinely raped by others who focus on scratching each other's eyes out. No protections at all from those who are supposed to be ethical enough to trust other people's lives and well being in their hands. Frightening, truly frightening, yet happens on a routine basis

When I realized my Bachelor's degree in secondary education was not going to be self sufficient after getting 50 dollars a day with no benefits being a 'substitute' teacher (professional baby sitter/prison guard for young people), I turned towards healthcare, which was my actual first intent. Then it became clear that all the public school jobs around here were locked up for those who had connections. So I took all the money which i had slaved away for as a substitute teacher and a security guard and another heavy lifting job at a local beverage distribution center and other odd job to get into nursing school. I was accepted, but there was a 2 year waiting list, so i went ahead and completed my 2 year associate's degree in respiratory therapy. Right after graduating from RT school and passing my cert and registry, i entered nursing school. I was working at least 60 hours at a local hospital which I can only describe as a chop shop. OK, we can indent here, lol, not like faceless book. The things i see these almighty Rns and BSNs do since i started, and the way they feel threatened by people like me who can do things that they cannot without their self impressive and ego driven titles. Having drawn ABGs, they come to me to get difficult blood draws. Someone has a mucous pug that is causing their oxygen saturation levels to plummet, i can isolate the source of the plug via auscultation and naso/tracheal the source of the plug and clear the airway. Whenever there is a code, seconds count. I have been in a situation where someone coded and the PA who was there slapped on a partial non rebreather mask with an E cylinder with a regulator that only allowed 6 L/min oxygen flow rate. In a code, as close .to 100% oxygen is mandated ASAP to minimize hypoxic insults. I was basically told to get the "f away, I was merely an LPN from some pool when this happened. So when 9/11 arrived, the guy ripped off the simple oxygen mask and put on a full non re-breather at 16 or so liters, what is indicated for someone who has coded to keep the bag 2/3 inflated to keep the victim from suffocating from re-breathing and thus suffocating from their own C02. I know for a fact that many of these "I am better than though because I don't have to work the floor or get my hands dirty" types are not in fact floor worthy, they can't do the work that they kick us around and threaten us to do because of their privileged status, and will make any and every excuse to justify being somehow superior to us let alone be qualified or in any position to dictate to us what to do. Those extra years of school mean NOTHING compared to those of us who work and know the floor, so get off your high horses

Such a pity that the health and well being of millions of human lives is left up to some greedy, for profit mechanism. Works like a charm for those who are not affected by it, really stinks for the 99% who have to wait and suffer because those who stand to profit from this 'your money or your life system' make you waste untold hours punching everything in from an insulin syringe to a dressing. Next, I expect them to keep track of toilet paper usage. How much longer is a dying middle class who just had 25 billion stolen from medicare going to put up with this selfish, greedy, and immoral system that dictates that access to healthcare is some 'luxury' and that if you can't pay you go without? Enough is enough

'if you are calling off because of emotional stress, THAT is a problem with your job. It is a signal that you cannot handle the stress of your job. '. Well well my my. Would love to put you in the situations i have been in over my career. You must be management or be new or have never worked the floor and actually cared about your residents or lost your sanity or not care about your license to make a statement like that. I would give my life and my license to see you who are so quick to pitty poo and chastise us who actually work to do 40 or more hours a week and then let me suggest that you chose the wrong career. How I wished I were that undignified to act that way towards others for a paycheck that I did NOTHING to earn. Must be nice. Walk in our shoes, and see if you make it a week or less to break your legs. Truth be told

I am not a druggie but I have a prescription for a benzo that I occasionally take. You can look it up online, they have shampoos that use heat to draw out any residue from your hair follicles and people swear by them. What goes on with my doctor and I is frankly none of their frickin business. Also, if you think you are going to be subjected to the violation of your Constitutional rights, wear your hair as short as possible. Shave your armpits ad pubic hair because if the hair on your head is too short for the snoops to get a good sample, they might try to get their sample from those areas.

Patient load, patient acuity, co workers, and the sadistic slave drivers in management who rule by threats and intimidation to make you do work that they know full well they are incapable of doing.

Any nurse that actually works the floor that tries to deny this is a liar. You bet we do.

changing jobs.......could mean saving your mental and physical health. I worked mostly in nursing homes for the last 20 years, then the last place broke me. They are all the same. People basically come in and want to do as little work as possible, try to dump their work off on others, especially new admits. Most places you have to pass meds the whole time when not getting diverted to take a phone call or do this or do that. Taking a 30 minute break means you will have to stay over that amount of time and when you leave exhausted, sore. and tired you still don't have all your work done. Management people are lazy and refuse to row with the rest of us slaves and work the floor. In my humble opinion, they should be mandated by law to work the floor so they can actually know what is going on in their buildings. I keep that opinion to myself at work, as that is one of 2 ways to get yourself fired, the first being if you suggest that management vultures help out and the other sure fire way to get fired is to ask to be treated fairly. The management slave drivers know loathe working the floor, they get that cushy office job or they pop a video into a player once a week and get paid to be some 'inservice director' and do nothing all day long but yet have shame in writing you up for work that they full well know they can't do and could not handle. Threats and intimidation, non stop. So you leave that nightmare scenario for a few years and take a huge pay cut to get into homecare. You will eat cheese sandwiches and take turns getting your cell phone, internet, and electricity shut off because the pay sucks but you don't feel like gargling razor blades at the thought of going into work. But here's the catch 22 about changing jobs. Apparently in my state the government decided to butt its nose into private industry, essentially siding with management over labor by requiring that you have to have 2 positive letters of reference from previous abusive, sadistic slave drivers. So that means that all that time they harass, threaten, and torture you to the point of having stroke level blood pressure and peptic ulcers you have to sit back with a smile and take it. If you reach a breaking point and just decide not to get out of bed because your back is blown out and your legs, knees, and hips are slowly being destroyed by running up and down hard floors for 8-12 hours then they like to get even with you, because that usually means someone in management has to take the cart. So keep that in mind when you can't take the antics of the lazy, sadistic slave drivers, they will fire you if you suggest they help out and you are toast if you are the reason they have to take the cart and actually do some work for once. The most important thing to consider when you are changing jobs.