VirtualMe

"My work partner and I both got counceled for not coming into work smiling. Well, we didn't come in crying either - after that whenever we looked at her we were quick to put on a crazed smile! And I had to remind that supervisor frequently that she wasn't smiling.:bugeyes:" I lost a job for that once. They came up with a hundred different ways to say it, but it was basically that they didn't like my "attitude." Because I was so rude as to say "Hello" instead of "goodmorninghowareyouooooooo??" when I came in, and didn't always have a fake smile on my face. Most of the other women who worked in that office were the sort who ALWAYS had a smile- a big, FAKE smile- on their faces. It was creepy. I was at Disney World recently, and I was amazed at the quality of their service staff. The people who clean up, take your tickets, sell you stuff- amazing! I know Disney is like the evil empire or something, but whatever they're drugging their employees with is working- they all seemed really happy to be there.

I live near a hospital, and I frequently see people outside smoking. I don't know what that hospital's rules are about where they can smoke, but it must be something like "so many feet from the entrance" or "this many feet from the edge of the building," because a great many of them move about half a block down the street and smoke... in front of an elementary school.

There are places that do not give good nursing care, and that is the fault of admin for tolerating it. It could also have been the PATIENT.....people who are normally absolutely wonderful can turn into total witches when they are pts, sometimes especially nurses. That was my first tought, too, when the mother started complaining, since she can be a pretty high-maintenance person, but then her daughter (the patient, aka the nicest person on earth) agreed that there had been some serious and inexplicable problems with a couple of the nurses. FWIW, they were in love with the ostomy nurse. And if it were me I would not tell everyone right away what I intended to do. Just do it. :) Then they will have nothing to say. Just say you are going back to school. Who could knock more education? "I'm just taking a few classes that interest me" I'm trying to figure out a way to do that. :) I work for my dad right now, and if I quit he's going to insist on knowing why. Try taking those science pre-reqs the nursing school requires. Also, if you can, get some CNA training this summer to get an idea of what working in healthcare is like. That's a good idea. Thanks!

Edited because I can't figure ot how to delete something completely.

A common misconception is that nurses are 'angels'. I never said they were angels. But this one nurse was actually going out of her way to antagonize my friend's mom, and made the whole experience way more difficult than it had to be. Or, to put it this way: YOU TRY WORKING FLAT OUT FOR 12 HRS AT A TIME, ALL ON YOUR FEET before you criticize clogs and clothing designed to protect against the various 'body fluids' that come our way. I work in a warehouse right now. It's office work, but I sometimes go out into the warehouse. I own a pair of very sturdy shoes specifically made for construction workers who have to walk around on rebar and other rough surfaces all day. They're very sturdy, very comfortable, and look like any standard brown oxfords. During my marching band days, I had a pair of black shoes that looked like dress shoes but were designed for walking several miles at a time. Clogs aren't the only comfortable shoes out there. I've been a waitress, a cook, and a dishwasher, I'VE DONE JOBS THAT INVOLVED BEING ON MY FEET FOR A LONG TIME, and I know that looking like a slob isn't required for potentially messy jobs. If you love children, want to model good behavior for the next generation and yu want to do it... then sure. That's pretty much what was pushing me toward teaching. I like little kids (I have no idea what to do with teenagers), and I would like to be able to help those whose parents can't provide the resources that my parents were able to provide. My first career field, my first "real" job out of college, was one that provided an amazing amount of variety, but it was with a company that was poorly run, and it kind of soured me on the whole experience. That, plus it's a shrinking industry, with fewer and fewer jobs available every year, prompted me to leave the field altogether. I'd love to have the freedom to say, "Y'know, I don't like working here. I'll apply somewhere else." Instead of, "I don't like working here. Guess I have to stick it out or get completely retrained to do something different." That said though, if I had the job-hopping/chronic dissatisfaction issue, the last thing I would do is pursue a career where so many red flags were already going off for me. Yeah, that's a huge concern. Lately, I'm really afraid of starting anything new. I've gotten into this really bad routine in the past couple of years where I bounce from place to place and never really commit to anything or finish anything. Chronically unhappy, I guess. I'm just trying to find a job with some freaking meaning to it. My favorite jobs in the past were actually volunteer jobs, where I was working with people who had legitimate troubles and needed help. People always laugh when I tell them that, because they know how much I HATE doing customer service. But there's a big difference between some jerk yelling at you on the phone because his order arrived a day late, and the occasional rude comment from someone who's been kind of cut off from regular society and is just desperate to talk to anyone who might be nice to him. I guess I tolerate the rudeness better from people who seem to have a reason to be rude. Well, thanks for the feedback, anyway.

I'm sure other people have asked these same questions a few billion times, but I need to take my turn asking questions. And expressing a few worries. I'm 30 and looking for a new career path. I've thought about going back to school for a teaching license, but I've also considered going to nursing school. I know I'd have to do a semester or so before even applying (my BA is in a communications field), and I'd want to do a BSN. My fear isn't that I wouldn't be good at it, but that I'd invest all that time and money into going to school, get bored after a semester or two, and move on to something else. (I've kind of got a track record with this sort of thing...) My frequent job-hopping has, in the past, been related to my excessive boredom or frustration with each of those jobs. I need something I actually am interested in and give a rat's butt about! I'm also pretty apprehensive about "friends" and relatives finding out I'm in nursing school and rolling their eyes and saying, "Oh, I'm sure THAT will last." I'm not someone who needs a lot of encouragement, but I really, really don't need a lot of discouragement, either. I know that if I hate it, then it's better that I get out as early as possible, but I'm really tired of people acting like I'm doing something wrong or I'm irresponsible just because I try a lot of dfferent things. Oooookay. Well, there was a lot more to that than I thought there would be. Any suggestion for dealing with all that would be nice. Now on to the more concrete stuff. I'm interested in working in schools, and I know that school nurses are badly needed in my state. The requirement are basically a BSN, an internship, and state board of ed. licensing, and a job is almost guaranteed. Do school nurses do much formal teaching, such as in health classes or the like? I imagine it changes from district to district and state to state, but in general, do they tend to do much classroom time? I think they do the whole "you're going to get your period" talk to the fourth-grade girls around here, or at least they did when I was in school, but I don't know if they do any other classroom work. Honestly, the addition of classroom time would be a bonus in my mind, but I could be looking at this all wrong. What sorts of jobs do school nurses do in the summer? Could you get work in, say, hospitals, or would it be more like summer camps? Do school nurses get very involved with individual students, or is it more of a general public health thing? How long are shifts in hospitals, in general? Is it organized like three 8-hour shifts, or is it 12-hour shifts? How do patients usually treat their nurses? I've had "service" jobs that were just demeaning, because people felt like they were paying your salary, so they have the right treat you like crap. I'd hate to go back to that. Also, t.v. shows usually show some animosity between doctors and nurses. Is that real, or just t.v. drama? And, based on another post I read, how often do you do little basic are things for your patients, like helping them brush their hair or shave? Part of the reason this stuff is on my mind is that I recently visited a friend in the hospital after she had major surgery, and she had a horrible experience with the nurses there. (She's in health care herself, so she was pretty objective about, and she still thought that most of them didn't know what they were doing.) Also, when I first walked into the hospital, I thought it was odd that so many people were wandering around the lobby in their pajamas... until I realized that those people were the nurses! Ugly, baggy scrubs, plastic clogs, sloppy ponytails. Not professional-looking, and as I later learned, not professional-acting, either. Maybe it's a little arrogant of me to think that I could do way better than that... but I'm pretty sure I could. Another young woman I know who's a nurse told me that she loves her job, but that she had to quit the last one because of the stress of dealing with nurses who hated their jobs! She said that whenever she acted happy, they acted like they had some kind of duty to bring her down. Okay, sorry for the long post, but any commentary would be appreciated. I'd like to get some sort of plan formulated in time for the fall semester, and I'm having a little trouble making up my mind.

Just out of curiosity, if you don't feel it's appropriate to shave a female patient's legs, do you feel it's appropriate to shave a mail patient's face? I would probably say "no" to the public hair shaving, too.