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Some of us want the responsibility. And there's not enough money in the world to go back to the thankless, back-breaking world of bedside nursing. Let me repeat for you: Sounds like you need a new job. Go be a CRNA.

I'm shocked how unsupportive people are here. "Go back to being an RN the pay is really good nowadays." GET. A. CLUE. Not all of us are in it for the money. A lot of us wanted to get away from nurses like you... NPs can learn, just like RNs. The post is obviously addressing a system problem--this NP needs to find a way to fit into a system or find a position in a system that works. Geez, whatever happened to encouragement?

Diabetics, obese, drug addicts, etc. aren't HURTING OTHERS with their poor decisions. There's a big difference. Nurses are allowed to not agree with or even like their patients. But nobody here is saying they aren't providing fair and "just" care to anyone. If any patient moans about bad hospital food or their treatment... we try to make them comfortable. We're all doing our best. Unfortunately hospitals are not the Four Seasons. And nurses should not be patient servants OR PATIENT MOMMIES. Personally, I think people who refuse the vaccine don't have any business working in healthcare. We practice evidence-based medicine. Not facebook-based medicine. This is your chosen profession. Don't believe in it? Leave the profession. Gotta wonder how these people even passed the NCLEX...

Put the sandwich/meth pipe/bottle down and get a job.

Red flag(s). Dump him.

Is this a NCLEX prioritization question? Good grief. Patient comfort (especially in a hospice patient!) should be the No. 1 priority. Weight? Who cares. Guess--and do not say that we haven't all done this. (It's not a pediatric patient who will have weight-based dosing of medications.) The problem with these admissions is short staffing. A good manager addresses short staffing instead of burning out herself and her colleagues. There's no nursing shortage, just a shortage of people who are willing to put up with a profession that rewards myopic management.

My advice to you is to find a different career path in nursing. Public health? Research? Occupational health? Insurance? I hear you that you are at your wit's end right now, but please understand that your nursing education and professional licensure are actually quite valuable assets. Even though hospital nursing is often presented to new grads as the royalty of the profession, I also found bedside nursing to be exactly how you described it--back-breaking, abusive, and under appreciated. (The national corporate behemoth hospital where I worked actually gave the nurses a fake gold doubloon for working during the first round of COVID. ) Basically if you are working the floor right now, unless you are a traveller, you are underpaid, risking your life, and being taken advantage of. Period. That said, the absolute worst part of nursing is the nurses who feel like you (and I) do, stick it out on the floors, and torture everyone around them because they are either too scared or too dumb to move on. But you know this. See you on the (happy) trails!

I started out as a new grad NICU nurse. I had a great preceptor. But quickly discovered that this is not the place for me. I found that, on the whole, NICU nurses don't really want to be nurses. They will freely admit that they cringe at the thought of "big people" blood or (God forbid) POOP. But they do loooooove reigning over their little helpless patients (and preceptees) and the almost invariably clueless and terrified parents. Sure, there are a few good eggs (mostly from older generations), but the majority are cliquey and in it for the money. Next shift look around, how many are preening their hair extensions and making appointments to get their tarantula eyelashes stuck on? Just saying.

I don't get it... this is what nurses do. Call and ask the provider for a pain med order. Day or night. No, it's not the last shift's responsibility. No, you can't control if the provider answers your call. Your job is to evaluate the patient, ask for the pain med, and document the response (or the provider's lack of response). If the patient complains about "customer service," so what--you've done your job and you have the documentation to prove it. And of course, if the patient decompensates, follow your facility protocol. Patients have pain. Nurses can't control everything--certainly not responsiveness of providers or appropriateness of orders. You want that kind of control and responsibility, go back to school and be a provider.

It is a sad situation. But hospitals are for acutely ill patients, not people whose families are at their wits end... Too many times hospitals are dumping grounds when families would rather spend their time and money on things (cigarettes, tattoos, pizzas, etc.) other than taking care of their loved one.

Nobody is forcing fast food on any group of people. Advertisers target the people who purchase the product. That is their job. Nurses tend to forget that there is such a thing as personal responsibility.

To nursing managers, no it's not the responsibility of bedside nurses to recruit staff, ever. And please expect everyone's fake smiles to wither when short staffing continues ad infinitum. If you want to reward nurses, give out gift cards that can be used outside of work hours, not fattening food and balloons! To nurses, you are not alone in feeling belittled by these "parties." Understand, these parties are for annual action plan spreadsheets, not for you. That's why they're scheduled during business hours with little to no regard for your time. But I agree, you have to be careful about to whom and how dissatisfaction is expressed in any workplace. Managers tend to be overworked and many are in over their heads (Google: The Peter Principle), which leads to fragile egos. If your manager doesn't understand the optics of helping with patient care when you are short-staffed (managers are still nurses!)--then, it's time to jump ship.

I felt obligated to help by going back to hospital bedside nursing during the pandemic. I lasted exactly one year, to the day. I was rewarded by a hospital system that did not protect me=one (1) N95... for my entire year there. So of course I got COVID. My soul was completely crushed by the insane staff:patient workload and patients who threw things at me, cursed at, and berated me personally for the ills of the American healthcare system. "Heroes," whatever. More like servants. Why nurses put up with this treatment is beyond me, but the amount of ridiculous backbiting and throwing each other under the bus is amazing. I'm in clinicals for NP school now. And I am: Never. Looking. Back.

Sounds exactly like the progressive care unit I work on. My last shift is coming up. It's unsafe. Hate it. There are so many better nursing jobs out there. Don't believe the "hero" rhetoric. Get out! And become an NP as soon as you can.

Um, that’s quite a leap. I only said I’d take whatever job I can get assuming there won’t be much demand for an inexperienced NP. That doesn’t mean I’ll work for nothing—but I’m not going to demand six figures with zero experience.

I’m in NP school because RNs are treated like medication administering monkeys. I am actually interested in having more knowledge and having more power to help people. NPs who are in it for the money were RNs who were in it for the money. Not my kind of folk, but whatever floats your boat. Oh and I’ll take an NP job wherever I can find one. Anywhere but the hospital!

I am an older nurse who went back to hospital work during COVID. I was relentlessly bullied by my coworkers. They made all kinds of nasty comments about how I was incompetent and didn't have time management skills. I'm in nurse practitioner school... I'm a great nurse. I just didn't know this particular hospital's systems (for instance, staff information is disseminated by bar codes in emails that we have to take a photo of on our personal cell phones to access... I remain mystified by this). I can think of a lot of reasons why these gals picked on me: different generation, shy, didn't grow up in this area, no children. I've come to terms with most of them by just doing my job and doing it well. But one nurse tech in particular latched on to me and has not let go. She's clearly bipolar=one minute sweet, the next minute quite menacing. She's been on the unit for 15 years and she just started nursing school and is having a tough time (sweet, sweet karma). I will be happily leaving this unit soon. Pretty sure I have PTSD from this experience. Nurses are tribal in a way that I have never experienced in other professions. And many young people are just simply insecure (or insane) which comes out as meanness. All this to say, do your job well and move on if you get stuck in a bad work situation. The meanies generally camp out in their positions forever.

I went back to hospital nursing because of lack of PPE in the beginning of the COVID crisis. What an eye-opener! I've been a nurse for 15 years and I can tell you that hospital nursing has DEVOLVED into an extremely toxic working environment. Look elsewhere and get out as soon as you can! (Not all nursing jobs are hospital hell jobs.) Most of the new grads I work with are judgmental and gossipy--keep your distance, unless you want to play those exhausting mindgames and go into management. Then of course there's the short staffing. Ohhhhh but we're hospital heroes because it's a pandemic. I'm calling BS on that. We used to have on-call nurses to fill in for sick calls and patient surges. Not anymore. The hospital doesn't want to pay extra for safe ratios. Why should they when they can just work the staff they have until they burn out (to be replaced immediately by judgmental, gossipy new grads). And no Friend, it is not your imagination... the patients are incredibly rude and entitled. Thank a society that allows this behavior in its leaders. But patients feign obliviousness to the pandemic and the fact that staff is sweating buckets trying to keep up with everyone's demands. Patients want their sodas and snacks and q1h PRN dilaudid "shot," and they will ask to speak to the manager if you aren't in their room the second they even think about ringing their call bell.

Night shift versus day shift=One more reason to become an NP...

Just because someone is sitting at a computer doesn't mean they aren't working. In order to SURVIVE, I let call bells ring when I need to get some documentation done. In my hospital it takes a good 30-45 minutes to document that first assessment and click all the boxes that the desk jockey nurses decide bedside nurses have to check. Five patients x45 minutes=you do the math. Do I enjoy charting? I do not, but documentation is part of the job. Let me be clear, I don't have a problem toileting patients and bringing them water. I work my tail off. But at some point I have to clinically prioritize. I will say that I rarely get a sip of water in the first 3 hours of my shift (whereas many of the CNAs I work with get a set of vitals on their patients, and then go get a breakfast burrito... every. single. shift). If I kept answering call bells, I'd have to stay hours late. I did that for a while. Have I ever seen a CNA stay one second past the end of their shift? Nope, never.

Many times MDs put patients on tele as a CYA. And it will be a nurse thrown under the bus if something goes astray. I work in a PCU. We have tele patients but there are no monitors in patient rooms. There is a central tele monitoring staffed by NON-NURSES. Sure, we nurses are trained to read strips and we have ACLS. But this is a ludicrous expectation when there is no monitor in the room, no nurse looking at the monitor in the central tele, AND WE HAVE 5-6 PATIENTS (ahem, ICU nurses). It's a money-saver for hospitals to cross-train nurses in everything. But make no mistake, the nurse will be blamed if anything goes wrong. So start studying strips and cross your fingers (and get out of acute care asap).

The hospital only cares about staffing a nurse body in the ICU. You are responsible for your license and scope. Never ever (ever) assume that anyone is looking out for you or going to help you. If it feels wrong, it is. But you will absolutely be seen as "the nurse with the bad attitude." Get used to it. Welcome to nursing!