Aurora0941

Looking for some opinions of nurses who have done work every weekend jobs, specifically nursing homes? I am currently doing home care which is super different obviously, but I am pregnant and am thinking about after baby is born how much I will hate being on call(because I already hate it) also the travel and time spent charting in evenings would be difficult. (Home care charting is pretty intense if you don’t know and has to be done in your free time since there isn’t enough time in the day usually) That’s why I thought weekend Nursing could work due to the high pay rate, and me not having to pay for day care if I did nights. Just want to know if you have done with a baby or young kids and like it

I want to know if pediatric psych nurses enjoy their jobs, how high the stress level is compared to the regular hospital floor, what type of day to day responsibilities do pediatric psych nurses have.. any information helps at this point

Thanks for replying, what do you love about your job? Have you worked on the regular medical floors or always psych?

I’m wondering if you enjoy your job, if you have worked on the regular med surg/step down floors and how you enjoy psych compared to those regular floors? Were the children usually violent? What did your job involve?

Hey all, Right now I work on a step down telemetry floor, been an RN for about 8 months now. I have a previous post on how much I dislike it. I've known since about one month out of orientation that this type of nursing is not for me. I'm looking for other opportunities. There is a psychiatric hospital in my city, well known and been in business since like the 1800's.... Is any one out there a pediatric psych nurse? I'm very interesting in this and it would be extremely different than what I do now which is a major positive thing in my eyes. There is also a drug detox unit which interests me, they don't hire very often because nurses tend to love it, the patients tend to sleep a lot. p.s. If you don't have anything nice to say, get off my post right now.

It’s not offensive it’s literally what the woman on the phone stated word for word. IF that lady has an issue with it she needs to reevaluate her own life and that’s her problem.

Recruiter said RNs do "treatments" whatever that means, assessments, and kind of oversee everything.

Does anyone have any experience working as an RN in a nursing home? I am beginning to explore my options outside of the hospital setting... I am going to do a tour of the place and see what kind of patients I would be responsible for because I have no clue what life is like outside of high acuity step down floors. She said the ratio is 10-14 and nurses don't have to do med pass because they have techs and LPNs to do that. any advice is appreciated. thanks!

I am going through the EXACT same situation right now except I am not on med surg but a step down unit from the ICU. I have only been a nurse for 6 months. I am trying hard to find an outpatient position that is not in a hospital. My mental health is suffering as well, I feel depressed and uninterested in the work I am doing as well as extremely overworked and overwhelmed. I say go for it. Your happiness is most important.

Thanks for responding. My patients do not have femoral catheters in place and the only drips we really only usually titrate are amio cardizem and heparin. I've heard on rare occasions they will prescribe different drips but typically in our hospital they would have to be in the ICU. What causes me stress is dealing with patients whos O2 sats are constantly dropping, and who have low blood pressure or out of control heart rates that I am trying to closely monitor. While dealing with this I will get an admission from the ER, or have patients demanding their narcotics within the minute. I feel like I do not enjoy critical care, it makes me too nervous dealing with the instability as well as the number of patients. Not that all 4 of my patients are unstable, but having to closely monitoring 1 or 2 of them with 2 others is too much (not forget all the stupid charting). DO you have any opinions on if nurses are happy in mother baby, LTC or maybe a docs office? Trying to seek sanity and happiness here. thanks,

Thank you for responding. I am going to try and hang in there like you said, I am still learning which I know adds to my stress and anxiety. However, I feel like there is no way I will be able to work here past my one year mark. You said you stayed on your unit 2.5 years? I cannot even fathom staying on this unit this long. I am considering trying to switch to mother baby, or some type of doctors office or LTC position after I complete my year. I don't know if critical care is for me, I may just enjoy taking care of more stable patients. Not sure if that sounds bad ?

Thank you for replying and for the advice. I have been searching for similar posts as mine and am finding several other people in similar situations. We do have nursing assistants, nurses get the first set of vital signs and the CNAs get the last two, we do Q4 vital signs. which is helpful. It seems like nursing assistants are also overworked, there are only 2 of them and sometimes they are busy which means I will clean up a patient or take them to the bathroom myself.

So I'm a new RN grad I've been working in a general ICU step down telemetry floor for 4 months now. I'm not new to healthcare I've been a nursing assistant and monitor tech for the past 4 years so I knew what I was getting myself into. However, I'm pretty miserable right now. I get out of work (night shift) feeling defeated. I have 4-5 patients who some nights are on the border of being ICU appropriate due to hypotension, tachycardia Afib decreased oxygen sats, out of whack lab values, neuro changes, etc.......we do cardizem drips and all that and continuous bipap and trachs and stuff. I feel like so much is expected of me and these peoples lives are in my hands and its just too much on my mental health. There are so many tasks at hand while also trying to monitor these people and deal with new admissions and transfers. Often my patients are completes, incontinent, super needy, crying out for pain meds, dealing with upset family, dealing with vital sign changes.. Does anyone else feel like this? I cant talk to other nurses on my unit because I don't want people knowing i'm unhappy with my job and it to get to management or anything.