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.

What a joke this thread is. Lazy management slave drivers talking about how tired they are and how stressful their job is. Give me a break. Try working the floor 8-12 hours a day 40+ hours a week. Where I work, the ADON and unit manager quit because they had to work the floor. Our morbidly obese DON was visibly distressed when she had to take a turn and remarked to me "I don't know how you guys do this every night". It is hellishly gratifying to see manage parasites and slave drivers fall apart when they actually have to do some work. They can't do the same work they are always threatening and intimidating us to do....do this, do that, I will write you up, disciplinary action up to and including termination, etc etc. One would have guessed that they broke their legs or had their fingers amputated when they are asked to push a cart up and down the floor. Truth be told. they are all lazy, sadistic do nothings who refuse to work the floor or dread it and that is why they quit when they are forced to.

The truth was just told. I am giving this lady real advice. That is the way things are done everywhere i have worked for the last 20 years. If they sense they have you trapped, they will dump all the treatments, new admits, blood draws, lab results, physician's orders, and monthly change overs on you. That was in the good old days when you could tell the lazy slave drivers where to stuff it and could get hired on the spot at the next nearest facility. Now that everyone and his or her brother, sister, cousin, and distant relative are flooding into the field, they are taking advantage of it. The truth be told, letting them know you are trapped by them is anything short of suicidal in nature. The consolation was that the unit fell apart after i had enough and the unit manager got fired a few months after I walked out of the place because orders were not transcribed for days or even weeks, critical lab results were not reported to the physician, and she had to do the new admits and made all kinds of errors. Sometimes karma is sweet to me.

I just love medicare charting. It's like the government doesn't want to put out any money for sick, disabled, or dying people (yet they have no shortage of funds for warfare and death) so they make us write a thousand word essay as punishment, under the rationale in typical government fashion that the quality of care can be proven by increasing the quantity of paperwork. The result of course is the exact opposite. The more time you waste clippity clipping on a computer means less hands on care and less time on the floor. Being 220 trillion in actual debt, I wonder if they will still demand all this meticulous charting after they steal our medicare and social security to pay for their never ending oil wars? I am betting they will still l find a way to make healthcare less effective, like everything else the government gets its hands on. Just wait and see.

I am thankful for my days off and the time spent off work with my friends Jack Daniels and Johnny Walker and Jim Beam who help me forget about work and preserve what is left of my sanity.

You work the floor, so you should expect this. We are rarely if ever treated with decency or respect. In fact, if you become too troublesome in having the audacity to ask to be treated fairly, someone in some lazy, do nothing management position will think nothing of firing you. So just sit back and take it, like us floor nurses and others who actually work always do.

Yes, if you let on that you would be homeless without a job, they will take advantage of your predicament and dump off all the BS on you because they know you can't quit. The last LTC facility I worked at, they looked for excuses to fire the older, seasoned veterans and hire in fresh, green grads for less money. Being a big guy, they always came and got me to be the human hoyer lift, I could pick up 300-400 lb patients like water. After 6 years, I woke up one day and couldn't get out of bed. I blew my back out and had to take 3 months off to go to a point where i could stand up again. When I went back, my patients were all delighted to see me but the management sadists told me that they didn't save my position and reminded me that I was an "at will" employee, which means they can terminate you at any time without having to give any reason and believe me, they abuse this "right" and I have seen them violate people's civil and Constitutional rights with impunity. So I went through a 6 month period where I would apply online for a job, once in a while someone would actually call me, and I would get an interview. Facing losing my house and eating cheese sandwiches 3 times a day alternating with peanut butter, I got very depressed and i hate to admit, scared bordering on terrified. We (my wife and I) had to file for bankruptcy. That horrible feeling of dread and apprehension of losing all you have because they don't have the human decency to call you back. It's a game they like to play. They have some receptionist answer the phone, you ask to talk to the recruiter or the DON or whoever makes the decision, the receptionist of course states 'may I ask who is calling', and then you get the person's answering machine. Leaving a message is like wiggling your toes at a hurricane, a complete humiliation and waste of time. Now some of these places insist on checking your credit history. I guess they think one might be tempted to steal the toilet paper or something if you are in bankruptcy. So I got this latest job to supplement my meager home care job, and was happy and enthused that I got another chance to work in a facility. It only took a month or so for my enthusiasm to dwindle and vanish. I dread going into the place, in fact I have to go back in about 3 hours and feel like a person on death row counting the hours. Yet I have to put up with it because home care is feast or famine. I already know what's going to happen and i am not there yet. As I walk through the door the drama will start. This treatment wasn't done, this new admit that has been there for 7 or more hours hasn't been touched. Everyone pissed off, stressed out, and trying to dump their work off on others. The CNAs want to eat their pizza or baskets of shrimp or whatever in the break room and get pissed anytime someone puts on their call light "can't you give them something to knock them out"? Right. I am going to put my license at risk by chemically sedating them so you can do as little work as possible. So the shifts fight with each other trying to get out of doing this or that, amd of course, the management sadists refuse to help out and when they do, they can't do the same work they are always threatening us with without visibly deteriorating. The DON remarked after working the afternoon shift "I don't know how you do this every night". My answer was 'neither do we" and wanted to suggest that maybe she should have a tad bit more empathy the next time she thought about writing some of the floor nurses up, but not wanting to lose my job I kept my mouth shut and silently delighted in seeing her misery and anguish. Welcome to our world. She now refuses to work the floor, and her ADON quit after she had to work the floor, as did the unit manager. They can't do what they are expecting us to do. I totally hate management slave drivers. Yet I guess I am supposed to feel lucky I have a job. Truth be told, never let them know how much you need an income because if they sense you are desperate, they will torture you with no mercy or remorse. They enjoy acting like that, so never let them see any weakness, else you will suffer, mark my words.

I swear they only hire supervisors and management people that are either sadistic or have no conscience. It wasn't enough to just fire you, the witch had to insult you and possible damage you emotionally. A normal, civil person would just tell you that you weren't a good fit. If this pig follows the norm, she will also go out of her way to dish you if future would be employers contact her. They get off on that, and rest assured, your future employers will go out of their way to contact her. So I would leave that facility off your resume completely. In the old days, I used to get hired on the spot, sometimes even over the phone. My attitude was put me on the floor, I will show you in no time what I can do. Now that there is an abundance of nurses, their attitudes border on downright abusive. These hospitals and nursing homes are feeling the pinch of an economy that is in a permanent state of contraction and will completely collapse in 10 years or less, so they have ways to harass and torture their seasoned veterans who once commanded a decent salary and hire in fresh grads for a "revised' wage scale (ahem, significantly less per hour). Making you rotate your floors means you have to learn faces and their routines, which makes an already stressful job even more unbearable. At my last LTC facility, the day nurse had a stroke, the midnight nurse developed peptic ulcers, everyone else was totally burned out or exhausted and had to quit or were fired. Everyday, more threats and intimidation, they leave notices up by the time clock telling you to do this or if you don't do that (like pluck out your eyeball and donate it to the organ donor market or cut one of your kidneys out), it will lead up to 'disciplinary action' and their favorite words 'up to and including termination'. You walk into the place and its like getting slammed in the head with a baseball bat. Always some drama, people trying to stab each other in the back, or the one that happens all the time and everywhere you go, trying to dump their work off on others. New admits that sat their for 7 hours and nobody started a chart, got vital signs, or ordered their meds. When you start to think that gargling razor blades would be better than putting up with another day on the job and can't take the torture anymore and quit before you lose your mental health along with your physical health, they like to get even with you by giving you a bad reference, so you have to smile while they skin you alive and pour battery acid in the open wounds they love to inflict on you. Welcome to the nursing field. Truth be told, it's like this everywhere. The drama is minimized if you are lucky enough to get into home care. It doesn't pay well and you have to buy a new car every 4 years or so from wear and tear, but if you want to enjoy life and not have the sadists and slave drivers at the local hospital or nursing home suck your soul and sanity away, there are other options.

I am one of those ones who could run circles around most RNs. The last hospital setting I worked at, I did a better job than they did without all the complaining that they loved to bask in. Miserable at home or whatever. they created a misery in crowd, and if you stayed positive and away from them, then they decide they hate you and team up against you. They realized this and openly created a hostile work environment for me. I say, yes, make that RN NCLEX challenging and I will take it and pass on the first try. No doubt the RNs who had the money from parents or wealthy spouses to afford to go through 2 years of school instead of 1 year are hostile to this idea and their egos will be assailed at the notion. Others will make up stories about how they donated blood to pay their way through RN school, or starved or lived off of cheese sandwiches for 2 years or ate lint off the carpet to get through RN school, but even when true, they are the exception, not the rule. Never think for a second that 1 extra year of being a psychotic bookworms translates into you being more intelligent than a good LPN. For that matter, I have a total of 10 years of college under my belt, my first Masters degree in secondary education didn't pan out, I got an associates degree in a different field that I found repetitive and boring, so by the time I waited to get into the LPN program, I was burned out with school, writing dazzling research papers, etc and had no desire as i grew older to work FT and go to school. So never let that RN title get to your head. Some of us could challenge that exam and meet or excel most of the RNs who like to carve out their ego driven territory and vehemently protest and harass anyone who can cross it.

I survived my OB/GYN clinical rotation only because the instructor was one of the rare ones that had empathy for a guy like me, a fish out of water in this area. The book work and passing exams was always easy for me, but only one woman consented to watch her give birth. The rest all refused consent. That and I got to see a C section. You are an exception. They really ought to give the guys a choice between OB/GYN or an extra med surg or psych rotation, giving us the option of foregoing the OB/GYN rotation with the agreement that could even go on our licenses that we will never work in that capacity. I have great admiration for the OB/GYN folks and those who bring life into the world, just not my cup of tea, if you will. I do have a great deal of sympathy for the brave women who go through childbirth, I was wincing for the young lady that seemed to scream forever as she gave birth to a 10 lb baby. I don't know how women do that, but not something that fits me and most other male nurses I know

What do nurse managers usually do? The truth be told, the house slaves (managers) sit in their nice, cozy, almost sterile, air conditioned cubicles and watch TV, play on the computer, stuff their faces with food, etc . Things they would write us up or terminate us for. The rest of us field slaves (floor workers) are out breaking our backs doing actual work on the floor, going home after each shift like we have been through the first day of boot camp or in a boxing match with Mike Tyson with our hands tied behind our backs, exhausted, sore feet, knees, legs, and backs. When its hot out, we are drenched with sweat, as either the AC is not repaired or the patients are always cold. Some come out and yap on their cell phones or eat at the nurses desk, while the rest of us field slaves, who never have time for a break, would get written up or terminated if we took an emergency call on our cell phones or grabbed a quick snack or drink of water. They get paid more and get treated better by the owner/master to threaten, intimidate, and bullwhip those of us who actually do the real work, all the while knowing they themselves could not even begin to do what they are asking us to do, always threatening and intimidating us to do more and more and more. Some of them used to be a field slave and since they got promoted to being a house slave where they push around paperwork and act like they have been shot with an elephant gun as a result, bellyaching about how supposedly stressful their jobs are (try walking in our shoes)dread having to go row with the rest of us field slaves. I will never forget one obese manager (most of them seem to be), when asked to help out on the floor because there was 1 nurse for 90 patients, the person stated "once I do, they will expect me to all the time" (referring to helping out on the floor) (my, wouldn't that be a tragedy). The truth be told, they are mostly very selfish, lazy excuses of human beings that could care less about the happiness or the well being of the patients unless it threatens their cozy, basically do nothing but be a slave driver type of job. Some are full of their titles and brag about their years of being this or doing that. It is hellishly gratifying to see the ones who are mandated to actually be a field slave and push the cart and work the floor. They are clueless, I have seen some in tears, they run over to other units and ask the usual field slaves what to do, how to do this, where is that, etc etc . The last place I was at, the unit manager quit "I didn't become an RN just to work the floor". Ditto the ADON who is incapable of listening and uses every occasion when we have to endure her know it all mouth brag about her decades of management experience, each and any topic that is brought up and she goes into a long and unbearable speech where she uses each and every occasion to show off or broadcast her bravado and ultimate knowledge about this procedure, ailment, diagnosis, etc yet can't pass meds or do a narc count. Why great and inquiring minds ever studied rocket science, quantum mechanics, etc when all this time we had miss full of herself to provide us with all the answers human kind's enduring questions and the mysteries of the universe. When the surveyors shadowed this legend in her won mind to do a simple treatment, they cited the place with numerous citations based upon her "expert" performance. Truth be told, it is what you learn after you know it all that counts. Then the DON, who is actually pretty nice and makes me worry that she will not last long (as the ones who are sane and show respect for us usually don't last long) , commented after working the floor a few times "I don't know how you do this everyday". You don't say. The truth be told, neither do we. Now there are some exceptions and I am sure some will protest and claim that they are not like that, but the truth be told most of the house slaves are there to get the fat check and take the path of least resistance and they have no mercy on us, no matter how hard we work, and most act like they had their legs and fingers cut off when they got that gravy office job to shamelessly whip and torture us with endless threats, write ups, suspensions, and even terminations (especially if you are an older, seasoned veteran and they are under orders from the top to harass and terminate us so they can hire in fresh grads for lower wages, a whole different story). They will shamelessly follow these orders. The truth be told, most of us field slaves (floor nurses) have no respect for them and even despise them. I have been at facilities where they throw parties when certain management people are marched or escorted out of the building. That usually means we get someone as bad or worse, even when you think that is not possible. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.