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When I graduated from nursing school I immediately accepted a position on an Orthopedic/Medical Surgical floor. On that floor, I was responsible for taking care of post-operative orthopedic surgery patients, most commonly joint replacements, and general med-surg patients. On any given day, we would have 6 patients and our assignment was a mixture of the two types of patients. Because our unit had such high turnover due to our ortho patients, it wasn’t unusual to have 4 discharges and 4 admits a day. It was quite exhausting. It was especially difficult because with the extensive amount of time that 4 discharges and 4 admits takes, you also had your other 2 sick med-surg patients to care for. Often times, we would receive admits from the ED that were inappropriate for our floor but due to hospital occupancy, it didn’t matter. Trying to manage an ortho patient’s schedule and a med-surg patient’s schedule was very challenging because they were total opposite, yet often times overlapped. Our ortho patients had physical therapy twice a day, once at 8:30 and again at 12:30. Prior to PT, we had to give our ortho patients their pain meds (if it was in the allowed timeframe, q4h) but that also overlapped with the 8:00 med pass of our med-surg patients with 18+ medications due at one time. We give our ortho patients pain meds around the clock. They are technically PRN but they are essentially scheduled. The rationale is that it is easier to prevent pain than it is to play catch up. If the patient is in pain, they will not be able to perform their PT exercises properly and ultimately not heal appropriately or gain full ROM. After 10 months of working on this floor, I decided to look for other positions as an RN. This job gave me a sense of pride because I was able to help people and do what I loved but it was physically and mentally draining. I applied for a position at an outpatient vascular surgery office as a moderate sedation administration nurse. I was offered the position and graciously accepted. We perform angiograms, smagrams, fistulagrams, thrombectomies on AVG’s, TDC inserts, changes, and removals, IVC filter inserts and removals, powerport inserts and removals, venograms, etc. Here recently, a local dialysis access center that offers maintenance work on patients’ accesses closed down. We have since received almost all of their patients and where we used to mostly treat our arterial patients with PVD, we have been slammed taking care of our dialysis patients and making sure their accesses are working properly. I love my job, I love the OR, I have amazing coworkers, I work 4 days a week 6:30am-5:00pm, no weekends, no holidays and enjoy what I do. However, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, sometimes I feel like I’m not a “real” nurse anymore. People will ask me what I do for work and when I tell them I’m a nurse they often say, thank you for all that you do and working on the frontlines. I feel guilty and often don’t know what to say because I’m not on the frontlines anymore, I don’t work in the hospital, I don’t treat COVID-19 patients. We were lucky enough to never slow down during the pandemic and we were able to remain open throughout the whole thing. I know what I do is making a difference for my patients because without it our dialysis patients wouldn’t be able to receive their dialysis treatment and our arterial patients would lose their limbs but sometimes I feel less than a nurse. When people think of nurses they think of the ones in the hospitals saving lives on a daily basis and fighting this virus head on. Am I really considered a “real” nurse if don’t do those things?