AnonyNurs

I read each comment and they were all so helpful and I appreciate the responses. It's been almost a week since I wrote this and while I'm still "recovering" a bit, I feel much better about my career choice in general. Like someone mentioned I don't think it's burn out, as much as acute stress from the situation I was placed in. I think with a little more time to process, I'll start to feel better about nursing in general. And like you all said, maybe this will open a door to a job I will ultimately love.

I graduated last May and started soon after on a medsurg floor. I went through the typical first year jitters. But I started to get pretty good at balancing my case load come January. I was building confidence, learning time management, I stopped crying so much in the bathroom ?. The palpitations stopped every time I got in my vehicle to go to work. I was actually starting to enjoy it and it felt like I was actually helping, vs painful learning. But then the Pandemic hit. My hospital didn't handle it well. One Friday night back in mid March they sent an email out notifying us that we were no longer allowed to use N95s in covid patients rooms. I immediately went to my floor manager, who assured me that was NOT the case. Saturday while I was sleeping, upper management came into the hospital and took all the N95S and locked them up. They claimed they had enough, but we couldn't use them. "WHO said it's droplet!" Then they went home and refused to answer their phones for our union rep. We were left scrambling the entire weekend as covid cases started rolling in. I received 2 that weekend. I still don't know if they were positive, because they refused to tell us, saying that it "violated HIPAA". ? I heard through the grapevine they weren't positive, but hey it's the grapevine so who knows how accurate it was. That Sunday night I put in my notice. There was also a lot of other stuff. (Wouldn't let us wear our own masks, spread covid patients all over the hospital vs a single unit, etc, etc). Saturday night The ED actually sent me a patient, I took report on this patient, was told he was coming in for something not even close to covid, come to find out when he gets to the floor, he's a covid rule out. I took report, so therefore I couldn't refuse care and was forced to enter this patients room with a surgical mask or risk losing my license for patient abandonment. My second rule out that weekend, had I refused care, it would have landed on my friend, who's like a sister to me (we were friends long before working together) she was the only other RN working the floor that night and she couldn't afford to refuse, as she's the only person working in her household currently. So I took the patient. It was honestly a very scary weekend and the weeks leading up to my resignation were very scary also. I tried downsizing as much as possible, but still eventually ended up with more rule outs. Who I don't know if they ended up positive. A lot of nurses and CNAs alike were scared, many couldn't afford to quit. Many others did quit. I had my last shift a little over a week ago and I've been told that things have improved since I left. They're cohorting covid patients, giving those nurses N95s, and now notifying nurses if their patients were covid positive. Little late, but better then never. But now I'm stuck. I don't want to apply anywhere. I don't want to think about nursing. I am struggling with wanting to even get out of bed some days and I am trying to keep myself busy with cooking, my hobbies and my part time school work. Maybe I just need time to process this all? I don't know. But I know every bone in my body hates nursing right now and I can't seem to make it stop. And I've worked so hard to get here. What can I do to get the spark back? Where do I go from here? Please be gentle. I know nurses can be very "pick yourself up by your bootstraps type", and because of that it's taken me a lot of courage to type this knowing I might get answers like that.