shining_star28463

I said the same thing and was told that the receptionist had said that she was the only one up front and could not go out to the parking lot looking for the patient and somehow the responsibility for making sure a patient is seen when he walks out of the building extends to the nursing staff. Oh and another argument is because I said that I would not go out to the parking lot and look for him (which I did say this). Not to mention the fact that I had no idea of which car the patient was sitting in or where it was parked and I knew no background information on this patient at all and there wasn't even a chart in the bin for him, only an encounter form and a triage sheet because the front office staff couldn't find his chart. So I don't understand how I was not using sound nursing judgment. I am of agreement that people harbor all sorts of dangerous weapons in their cars. The front office argued for a lock to the door so that patients couldn't just walk to the back (because they frequently did this) but now we are supposed to go searching for patients in their cars?!

I have posted a few times before about my physicians office job as a LPN (the receptionist promoted to office manager because the hospital could find no one else for the job and the office being so disorganized..etc...) and it seems like now every week it's some different nonsense to deal with. So, anyway this is what happened today. I get confronted about a patient that left the office Friday because he had to wait too long to be seen about his back pain and went to the hospital. The patient went and signed in with the receptionist as a walk-in then went back to the parking lot to his car because he had a massaging seat in his car. He told the receptionist that he would come back in and check with her to see if he'd been called back. No idea of what type of car he was driving or where it was parked and the parking lot itself was full. I went upfront and called the patient's name several times and no one answered and that's when I got the story from the receptionist about the patient going to his car and he'll be back in to check with us and blah-blah-blah. So I told the receptionist that I was going to pull the next patient back because I'm not going to run this patient down in the parking lot when there is an entire roomful of people waiting and when he comes back in let me know so I can call him. I went back upfront at least seven times and called the patient's name and there was no answer and in between this I continued to triage the people that were waiting in the lobby. Then I got called into the room for dressing change that at least took an hour and that's where it ends with me. So today, the office manager told that I should have went to the parking lot to find the patient or sent one of the other nurses to the parking lot to find the patient when the patient wasn't in the lobby when I called him back even though the patient said that he was going to come in and check with us and that she has to write me up. No matter that there was a lobby full of people waiting to be seen or that the other two nurses were busy. I should have pulled the nurse from her telephone callbacks or the other nurse from her patients to search the parking lot or I should have gone myself to search for the patient in the parking lot. Apparently after I'd left for the day the patient's mother (patient is a middle-aged adult) came into the office and complained because he had to wait too long and they were going to the hospital. Don't ask me why the patient's mother couldn't have in checked to see if he had been already called back (more than once) or if he couldn't have checked to see if he had been called back like he said he would. So I went and talked to the nurse practitioner since she is supposed to be the advocate for the nurses to argue my case and according to her I did not use sound nursing judgment and she support me being written up. She said that when I came to the patient's name and he wasn't in the lobby I should have looked for him since the receptionist told me that he was in his car because his back hurt and he has a massaging car seat. I told her that I do not agree with this because it's ridiculous that anyone should have to go searching for a patient in a parking lot when I have no idea of car he is driving or where he is parked and it is not my responsibility or the responsibility of anyone else in the office to run a patient down. Apparently because it is only "one time" and "one patient" and "it doesn't happen all the time" this is something that the nurses in our office is supposed to do. My argument is where does the patient's accountability and responsibility come into play and should my nursing judgment extend to the parking lot? I guess I will receive the paperwork regarding the write-up tomorrow, but I refuse to sign it and I am writing a rebuttal. Am I wrong or does anyone agree with my position?

I graduated from nursing school in fall of last year and began working as a LPN in a physician's practice owned by a hospital back at the end of January 2009. The staff that I joined had been together for at least two years before the practice was purchased by the hospital so the nurse practitioner, other LPN and receptionist knew each other before I came aboard so I have always felt like the odd person out. Anyway, the other LPN and I butted heads early on (as stated in a previous post of mine) and although I took the advice of everyone on the board and spoke to the nurse practitioner that situation has not greatly improved. My LPN co-worker irritates me on an almost-daily basis by constantly questioning me about what I am doing, watching my time clock and looking for any presumed oversight so that she can harp on it. The hospital recently acquired another provider for the practice and hired a MA to help over the staff shortage (but there's still a staff shortage) and the LPN co-worker is constantly overstepping her job description with her as well. An example of this is: I had separated patient charts last night into piles that the provider had to see and piles that we could get done later. She goes over to the piles and says, "Why are the approved PA's over here? The provider doesn't have to look at those now?" I answered that there were no approved PA's in the pile. She says, "Oh, yes there are." Then she proceeds to go through the pile of charts that I have already separated to prove to me that I don't know what I'm talking about.. So she pulls a couple of charts with PA paperwork attached and practically shoves the charts in my face and says, "See." So when I tell her again that there are no approved PA's in the pile only the rejected ones that the provider has to look at to decide if she wants to appeal, my co-worker says, "Oh." No apology. Nothing else but, "Oh." Another example is yesterday she and I were working the floor with the two providers while the MA was on the telephone. We all rotate days with the providers and telephones and the nurse practitioner is normally busier than the physician and so whoever works with the physician usually helps the other person cover patient care on the floor. Yesterday since I was with the physician I tried to help the co-worker LPN with the nurse practitioner's patient load such as triaging a few of the patients and everything but the physician was pretty steady as well and there was a pile of callbacks that were placed on my desk that had to be done too. So in between doing my patients, labs and injections for the physician I was trying to get all the my other assignments done when my co-worker comes up to my desk (while I am the phone with a pharmacy) and says, "You don't cover for me when you're on the floor with Dr. _ , do you?" So I say, "Do you have flags pulled because I just checked and I didn't see anything and Dr. _ has work here that he want me to get done." She says in a really nasty tone, "Yeah, I have 2 injections, but I'll get it." Meanwhile, I have triaged several of her patients in between my own and not to mention the fact that when she is supposed to be helping to cover the floor, she ends up not doing anything but sitting at her desk and pretending to make telephone calls. Anyway, I let that one ride too. Then last night, after I have finished up the nightly callbacks that I was handed to do by the providers I went to clock out and there she is again asking me, "Are you done with everything?" I am so fed up and irriated with her I feel like I am moments away from blowing up. Another issue is the medical office manager is inexperienced and has zero medical knowledge. She was intially the receptionist and the office needed a manager so when the first three people that the hospital wanted to hire fell through, she applied for the job back in the summer and got the position basically by default. One day, I left at 5:30 to try to make it to my son's football game. I am scheduled to work 8am-5pm but since I've been there I have always worked until at least 6:30 or 7:00 and sometimes as late at 8 or 9. Anyway, I left a few charts to do the next day. There were prescription refill requests and on our voicemail we tell patients that there is a 24-48 response period and we will get back in contact with them. I had already spoken with the people and told them that that they could pick up their prescriptions the next day, but I left the prescriptions for the provider to sign and was going to put them up front for the patients to pick up when I came in the next day. So the LPN co-worker was on scheduled to do the phones the day after and I guess a couple of patients had repeat called that morning. No one bothered to pull any of these charts to determine whether or not I had spoken with anyone. I suppose that she and the office manager just sat around and talked about me before I came in because as soon as I clocked in; still had my purse on my shoulder, the office manager pulls me aside and infront of everyone else in the front office tells me that, "I don't need to be leaving work to do the next day because she got a couple of calls from patient's saying no one called them back about their refills and that the co-worker LPN got calls too." So I said, "On our message we tell the patient that there is a 24-48 response period for refill requests and also that I had spoken to everyone that called and did she have any charts pulled to show me who they were?" The answer was no, she didn't pull their charts and she couldn't remember who they were but I need to do all my work before I leave. I did become angry then because whenver anyone else wants to go, they leave. The office manager leaves no later than 5:30 everyday and my co-worker leaves promptly at 6 pm every Thursday for her Bible Study class. This was the first time that I had ever left to do anything and it was after my scheduled hours and I still ended up missing my son's football game because I ended up being late. And I told her that I was always there, doing everyone else's work when they didn't want to with no complaints and the one time I left to do something with my family it was an issue. She didn't say anything else but I also talked to the nurse practioner about it because I think that the office manager is good at managing the front office but she doesn't know enough about medicine or what the nurses do and don't do to try to tell me how to practice. I also believe that she should acquire communication skills because no one should tell an adult what he or she needs to do. So then tonight before I leave, the office manager says that she needs to talk to me. She says that the hospital is trying to look at ways to cut overtime and asks me if I would mind coming in from 8:30 to 5:30 and the MA will come in from 8 to 5. Since I live almost an hour away and this gives me more time for the commute this sounds pretty good to me so I agree and then ask but what is the other LPN going to do?" Then comes the kicker. The other LPN is going to work a ten-hour shift from 8am-7pm and then she will be off on Thursdays and on Thursdays the MA and I are expected to do patient care for both of the providers and work the telephone as well. The MA has to be out by 5:30 at the latest everyday because she has a small child in daycare which means that will leave me to get all that work done and answered before I can leave on Thursday nights plus then the office manager says and just because the other LPN will be there until 7 doesn't mean that we are supposed to leave anything extra for her to do. Then she says the MA and I will just have to be on our "A" game on Thursdays since the other LPN will be off. My issue with this is, "How is it fair to the other staff that one person is allowed to have a day off during the week?" I would love to have a day off during the week to go to school functions (I have 3 young children) or generally just get things done that I can't do on the weekends or simply to rest and I am sure the MA would to so is it wrong for me to say that I don't agree with a change in the schedule that will allow one person the flexibility that others are not allowed. Not to mention the fact that I average a near-ten hour day anyway and so does the other LPN. We are severely short-staffed for the extensive care that the office offers and the practioner alone sees an average of 32 patients a day that have to have injections, EKGs, in-house lab tests and phelebotomy done. The physician is fairly new to the area but he's averaging at least 20 patients with the same needs. I am very unhappy with the disorganzation and back-biting that goes on in the office and the hospital management is no better with constantly saying, "No overtime," then not providing the staff needed. I feel rushed trying to get these patients in and out. For instance, the practitioner saw 22 patients before lunch today and I didn't clock out until 1:43 pm because there was so much stuff that had to be done. There was at least another 10-12 patients seen after lunch. The office manager/receptionist does the scheduling and also just lets people walk in even though it is not a walk-in clinic. Luckily the MA does a great job helping to cover the floor but I know that feeling rushed and stress is how mistakes are made, however no one listens to my concerns about the overscheduling. I go home stressed and exhasuted every night. I missed every single one of my son's football games and my daughter's basketball games. I haven't seen her play volleyball either and her last game is next week. I have had to school functions and dental appointments because of my work schedule. I feel that my family is severly neglected. I know that the economy is not great and LPN jobs are scare but I don't know how much more of this I can take. And now, the idea of one person being singled out to have a day off during the week? That is preposterous and very unfair. I know that this is a very long post but I would appreciate any responses and advice.

please hold off the attack and exclamation points. i apologize if you misunderstood but i do not refer to her attitude as "yankeeness" my co-worker coined this term of "yankeeness" herself. maybe i should have worded my post differently to make it understood that it isn't me who pinned her with this moniker. when she says something rude she then brushes it off by saying, "oh, it must be my yankeeness showing." further, i am not insulting anyone because i am originally from "north" of the mason-dixon line myself and even though i've lived majority of my life in the southern states i know that not everyone from the nothern states is rude or brusque.

I have decided to meet with my NP on Monday morning and talk to her about what is going on. Thank you all for your wonderful advice.

This is a very long post and I apologize in advance for its length but I have an enormous workplace issue that I need some advice in solving. I am a new LPN, just graduated in August 2008 and passed my boards in September 2008. I landed my second job (3 weeks in an urgent care was my first) in a new family practice office ran by a family nurse practitioner whom I really enjoy working with. The problem is my co-worker. She is a fellow LPN who came with the family nurse practitioner from the previous practice and has worked with her for two years but I've noticed an on-going theme of throwing me underneath the bus whenever there's an issue and slamming me with work while she manages to "look" busy without completing anything. Case in point: The practice opened its doors in February. Being a newbie, of course I had no experience doing nursing visits, answering patient phone calls or doing PAs and referrals so I was supposed to work the triage while the other nurse was supposed to do the nursing visits and patient phone calls until we settled in. Somehow the other nurse never managed to clear all of the calls from the telephone during the business hours or get a single PA or referral done and all three of us (including the family nurse practitioner) would have to stay late in the night to get things done while she moaned about not having the time to do anything. I didn't moan one bit about triaging an average of 33 patients a day nor did I ask her for any help. Well, about the third week in February she comes in with this strange "I'm done" attitude and announces just before lunch that she's tired of doing phone calls all day and that's not what she signed up for and she's taking off for an hour to "clear her head" and when she gets back she's not doing the phones. Just like that. So then I'm forced to go to the telephone and try to clear messages and call patients back and do all of this stuff with referrals and PAs that I have no idea how to do because she decided that she was tired of being a "desk nurse" and basically told us what she was and wasn't going to do it. Then she decided that she and I are going to trade triage and telephone duties. My triage days being Monday, Wednesday and Friday which are incidentally our busiest triage days and lightest telephone days and that she wants to leave early every Thursday night so she decided my early day is Tuesday. A couple of days after this incident when I came in that morning the FNP handed me a patient's file with a sticky note marked do in AM and asks me to get a call done. It was just before opening time and I was settting up for triage duty but if the FNP asks me to do something then it's my responsiblity. Anyway, my co-worked swoops into the triage room where I have a few files stacked up that I've been given to do callbacks on and announces that we don't have time for me to do the callbacks and I need to be getting the patients in because she's not staying there all night. Then she says that she'll do the callbacks and she proceeds to take all of my files. Before she goes I tell her the FNP asked me to do that top file this morning so she needs to go ahead and get that done and she says okay and off she goes into her back office so I naturally assume that she's made the callbacks like she said she was going to. So the next morning when I come in my co-worker runs me down just as I'm turning on our lab equipment and she says, "Oh yeah, the FNP is going to ask you about that telephone call that you were supposed to make yesterday morning because after you left last night she received a call about the patient and they said that you had never called them back about what she'd told you to do." And I say, "Well, you took all of the files off my desk and I told you that the top file was something that needed to be done first thing." She says, "Oh, well I forgot to do it and when the FNP said that she told you to do it I just told her that I took the file." So for the rest of the day I'm feel like crap and like I didn't do my job and I go to the FNP and tell her that from now on when she hands me a file I will do it myself and personally hand it to her so that I know it gets done. So there have been other incidents here and there where she just sits there shuffling papers all day while looking busy as a bee and getting nothing done while I bust my butt on the floor and then when it's my turn on the phones I'm busting my butt on the phones and doing all the nursing visits and other miscellanous stuff too. She tells the FNP that I agree with her about things like scheduling patients and all this other stuff when she hasn't even talked to me about it and she's constantly being negative in front of me then putting on a fake smile in front of the FNP. The PRN nurse who has been in a lot helping us has noticed it and says that she doesn't know how I deal with my co-worker every day and tells me that I'm crazy to let her keep walking over me adn throwing me under the bus. So then comes today. She was off yesterday. Supposedly because her eyes are red and that means she has to go to the doctor. She was diagnosed with seasonal allergies and given eyedrops according to her but she certainly didn't have a doctor's note. Did I mention that I have come to work with strep throat, a fever, URI, ruptured right eardrum and N/V? And these were all seperate illness within the first few weeks of working here and I came to work when I could barely stand. The only thing that grounded me for two days was severe vertigo that kept me from driving because my ears were filled with so much fluid. Oh, and now she's decided that we each should have alternating Wednesdays off. Anyway, today the first thing was an incident with a patient's lab work. I don't do venipunctures because in the state I work in I have to go through hospital training first but my co-worker does. She drew a patient's blood that morning and at the end of the day it was sitting in the machine. I thought that she had spun it down since she was the one who had done the draw and I had no idea what was going on since I was triaging and she was yelling about me keying in the labs before I go home so I grabbed up the blood and keyed in the order and shipped it off to the lab. Well today, the lab calls and says that serum wasn't seperated because the sample hadn't been spun down and the patient has to come back which costs the patient more money. My co-worker immediately says in front of the FNP, "Oh, you didn't spin that blood down before you sent it in. You're always supposed to spin it down." Like I knew that she didn't spin it down before she told me to send it. It had been sitting there all day! So I was put entirely on the spot and I said that I'm sorry that I didn't spin it down and I felt horrible because I feel like now the FNP thinks I'm a slack-off who can't do a job right. The second thing was that right after closing a telephone call from the pharmacy comes through on my line and there's an incident with a patient and a forged prescription. I get the pharmacist to fax over the prescription and it's one of our pads. So we rush around (the PRN nurse and FNP included) and we pull the patient's chart and are try to figure out how the patient go her hands on one of our prescriptions. So my co-worker pipes up with, "She hasn't been here since the 4th and you had to leave one the presciption pads out and she must have taken it then." So I tell her that after I write prescriptions I put the prescription pad in the top drawer in the triage room and the patient had been there on the 17th to pick up something and maybe she took it then or something. Incidentally the 17th is when I was on the phones and no where near the triage room or prescription pads. But guess who was? Then my co-worker says, "No, you leave the prescription pad out ALL THE TIME." Which is a lie. I will admit that the first couple of days after I started working there in early Feb. I left it on the top of the desk because I wasn't used to writing prescriptions or any of that but when the FNP told me that there are issues with drug-seekers stealing pads I began keeping the pads in the drawer. So then I immediately begin to think "What if I put it in the drawer on the 4th and the women went in the drawer and took it?" even though I can't remember even seeing the woman come in the office because I was on phones the day she came in on the 4th as well and the writing in the patient chart is definitely my co-worker's handwriting. Not to mention the fact that besides my co-worker who has access to script pads there are student nurses (from high-school!) writing up prescriptions all of the time and the many PRN nurses that rotate in and out who leave the pad on the desk and she has a habit of doing this herself. So here I go apologizing again. And my co-worker is all like, "You should think of this as a learning lesson and then you won't do it again and blah-blah-blah." The FNP says that she's going to call the pharmacy and speak to DHEC to put out alerts. So my co-worker just flounces off because she's so perfect and leaves me and the PRN nurse in the room alone. The PRN nurse tells me do not take the blame for that because I am not the only person with access to prescription pads and there are too many people around here who write prescriptions. After about ten minutes the FNP comes in and says that the pharmacist told her that the woman actually soaked an old prescription that she had written a while ago in some type of solvent and changed the medication on it and that a prescription pad had not been stolen. Anyway, by that time I was pretty upset because it felt like I was just getting hung out to dry and being blamed for everything that goes wrong. I was close to tears. I work my butt off and my co-worker walks around like she's beyond reproach. It was well after 5 pm by this time (we close at 5pm) and I went in the triage room and put my head in my hands because I felt miserable. My co-worker comes in with her fake sympathy and asks what's wrong and I say that I'm just ready to go home and that I'm getting tired of getting blamed for things I don't do and I'm done for the day. She tries to hug me and she says, "Oh, she didn't even steal a prescription pad so it wasn't your fault. Don't blame yourself. The only perfect being is God." I don't know what she tells the FNP because the next thing I know the FNP comes in to talk to me and she says that it wasn't my fault and there was no harm done and I'm so upset and I just tell her that I need to go home and I'll see her Monday. My big thing is: What if the woman had stolen a prescription pad? All that blame would have been piled on me while Ms. Perfect walks off scot-free. The thing is that everyone is constantly catering to whatever my co-worker wants. If she wants certain days off then she gets it. If she doesn't want to work telephones then she doesn't have to. She talks to many of the patients like they are crap. She tells the FNP what she will and will not do. The FNP is very sweet and I think that because she worked with my co-worker so long when it was just the two of them she is used to her "Yankeeness" and she generally ignores her but I cannot ignore her any longer. My co-worker will sit there and shuffle papers all day and then I will be in the office half the night trying to finish. Did I mention that I have three young children and a husband that I would like to get home to while all of children are out of the house and she's got "Bible study" every other night that she has to do go? She's constantly peeking over my shoulder to see what time I clocked in or how many hours I have or when I'm clocking out for lunch and when I'm coming back and constantly turning things that she does wrong back on me. For instance the blood and callbacks. She constantly has an attitude with the patients and then she plays it off by saying it's her "Yankeeness". She's been working with the FNP for 2 years and I because I'm the new girl I think that she expects me to just take it and not say anything but the more I think about it, the more upset I become. I do not want to get fired and I do not want a lot of animosity but I am sick of it. My husband says that everyone just does what my co-worker says including the FNP and it seems to be true. What do I do in this situation?

I just passed the NCLEX-PN on September 19th and after nearly a month of job searching I finally found a LTC facility that is interested. The facilitiy is about 40 miles away from my home which isn't very good because of the gas prices but when the DON called yesterday asking me to interview, I decided to drive down and give it a try. When I got to the facility I have to admit that I was a little taken aback. There were residents wandering everywhere without anyone paying too much attention and the office manager was on the floor passing medications and doing treatments because there was a lack of staff. Allegedly it is only today that there is a lack of staff. Anyway, I did the interview. The DON seemed overly enthuiastic about offering me the job. I filled out paperwork for a background check and peed for a drug test before the interview was even finished. She told me that she had been advertising the positon in the newspaper and on the internet for months and I was the only person to answer the advertisment. I asked her about the turnover rate and she said that an activities director and RN had been there for about fifteen to twenty years but she didn't give me specifics on the others. She showed me the schedule and at least three names (nurses) had been taped across because they would be leaving soon or had already quit. Another nurse has been on a federal jury for 23 months and can't work many hours. The shift is 11pm-7am shared with another LPN. The pay is $17.00 an hour and I would be responsible for 40-43 residents per night. The facility houses 83. I am desperate for a job but I don't know if this is the right fit for me. I believe that the patient to nurse ratio is high and I am getting weird vibes from the way everything went down. It seemed rather Stepford with everyone smiling at me and egging me on but I have this crazy feeling that it's a lot going on underneath that no one is alluding too. Maybe there is a reason the advertisment went unanswered. I don't want to risk my license but then again maybe I am I reading too much into it? Does anyone have any advice.

I took my NCLEX-PN earlier this morning and it cut off at 85. I just wanted to scream and shake the computer screen. I felt like I didn't know anything. I have counted at least eleven questions that I've gotten wrong already and that was with easy stuff that I should have known (i.e. etiology of certain disorders like Cushings and what to assess after an epidural opiate agonist has been given and how you can tell when left sided heart failure is getting worst). I don't know what I was thinking. It's like I went blank. I mean, I graduated nursing school with the highest GPA in the class and today I felt like I didn't learn anything. And I studied. I did the 5 week course with Learning Ext. and I did questions with Saunders almost daily. I feel so stupid. I did have about 4 math problems and at least 5 SATA and a few priority questions but the easiest ones I MISSED! I stumbled to the car with an stunned expression on my face and now I just want to cry. All of my friends have passed and their tests carried on to higher numbers. I just feel like I'm doomed. There's no way I passed the test and missed those easy questions. I am embarassed and I feel like a complete idiot. I should find out on Friday, but I already feel like I failed. I want to crawl into a cave and die.

i do understand that there are limitations as to what the lpn can do, so i definitely did not go into this thinking that i was going to graduate and get a job in an icu or anything, but i did think that i was going to get a well-rounded learning experience especially now that we've moved on to a peds/maternity i assumed that we would get at least some hands-on experience, not another semester in the ltc facility. i feel like it's being pounded into my head that this is all i can do, but i am certian there are other options out there for work as a lpn. i am worried that i will have no clincial experience in anything but ltc facilites and once i start doing interview rounds, i have to say i didn't learn to do x-y-z, that i was supposed to have learned by now. i already know that from the experiences i have had in the ltc facilities during clincials i do not want to work in one, so i feel like once i graduate i have no idea of what i am going to do. ultimately i do want to return to school and continue because i want to work as a nicu nurse but until then i still have to live and i want the satisfaction of saying that i like my job. i guess i'm just feeling a little disenfranchised.

i graduate (hopefully) from my lpn progam on july 30 and i am so stressed out and depressed. we have just returned from our break today and out class work for the 10 week session is overwhelming, and now the whole "okay, so what's next" dread that i'm feeling now that it's almost over is breathing down my neck. i have worked very hard to get through the program and i have maintained a 3.0 gpa (so far), but now that it's getting down to the wire i don't know if i will be able to find a job that i will enjoy doing. i am not very interested in working in ltc facilites, but that seems like the only type of experience that i have received. we are in our peds/maternity rotation and we're doing our clinicals in a ltc which means basically no peds/maternity hands on experience at all. i was so happy at the end of the last semester because i thought that we would finally be out of the ltc facilities and moving on to something else, but alas here we are again. i am supremely depressed about that. we still haven't done an ivs or trach-care and it's only 10 weeks left before we graduate and i feel overwhelmed and under-prepared. the nclex is right around the corner and then real life and i am afraid that after working soooo hard i am going to be stuck in a job that i hate because it's all that is offered to me because i am a lpn. seriously, all that we've learned is ltc care. i am tired. i am stressed. i am depressed. i keep looking online and in the newspaper for jobs in my area to see if there is something that i would like to do, but all that i can find advertised is ltc jobs and as much as i love the elders, i don't want to work in ltc. i am beginning to feel like i have wasted an entire year of my life learning skills to work in an area that i am going to hate. i don't know if it is just fatigue setting in but i am begining to question everything about my choice to a lpn. i am already unhappy with the way that this semester is going and we just started. i guess i just need some uplifting words, because right now i feel really down.

Thanks for all the support. I just really feel terrible right now but I know that this is what I want to do. I realize that I haven't been putting my best foot forward but I still don't believe that I deserved such a harsh punishment. I cannot change what has already happened, all I can do is brush off the negativity and move on but I am anxious and nervous about the blood pressure checks and the head to toe checkoff. I will be practicing however and speaking with my advisor.

This a continuation of my other post. Today I had to meet with my clinical advisor and the instructor afterclass and I was told that I am not to go back to the clinical site on Monday and instead I have to go to campus and watch films and write reports, then I have to check off on five blood pressure readings and do an head to toe asking all of the pertinent questions (all of this is due before Feb. 8) before I will be allowed to go back to the clinical site and if I don't meet the criteria then I can be excused from the Med/Surg program. Basically I was told that I am the worst student in the program and that I don't know anything. My clinical instructor said that it wasn't fair to the other students to have me around because I don't know what I'm doing. I am really devastated. The semester just began and we have only done two clinicals. I will admit that I made mistakes but I believe that the punishment is very harsh for the mistakes that I made. I feel stupid, I feel like a failure and I really feel like just giving up. I have wanted to be a nurse for as long as I can remember and I have given up so much to get to this point and I feel really discouraged. It's like a hatchet hanging over my head, threatening to destroy my dreams and there isn't much I can do about it. I mean, what if I don't get all of the blood pressures correct or I miss a few of the assessment points? I'm really upset and I just need a little advice and inspiration...please someone help me.

I feel like I'm not really getting a chance and I feel like I have to try 100x harder than anyone else in the clincal just to prove myself. It wouldn't be so bad if I knew what she expects but she is so unapproachable. Like I said, last semester we only had six clinical days and we only performed NA work, we checked off on all of our procedures once with our classmates that were normal and now we're expected to go into a clinical enviroment dealing with sick patients, new instructor expectations and know what we're supposed to do. Not only that but I feel like that instructor doesn't want to spend anymore time with me than absolutely necessary. I feel that my learning experience isn't what it should be. I can take constructive criticism but for someone to tell me that I don't know what I'm doing and that unless I get checked off in the lab on a head to toe assessment I won't get to back to the clincal site is a little much. It's not as if I was doing something obscenely wrong, and dangerous to the patient and I will admit that I made the mistake of not checking the patient's armband but I don't believe that the mistake that I made warranted that kind of response from her when she is all smiles with the other students. I was to the point of tears earlier today, and it was all I could do to suck it up and get through the rest of the day. I don't know if I should just try to stick it out or meet with the dean of nursing and ask for a new assignment because I don't think it's going to get any better.

Pain, Pallor, Pulse, Paralysis, Parathesis

Is she like this with just you or other students as well? She's like this with one other student that is on the Tuesday rotation. She told that student that she only had two weeks to decide whether she wanted to be a nurse or not. I did feel like when I went in to do the head to toe assessment other than forgetting to check the patient's armband I did pretty well and it is such a cut to someone's confidence to tick off all these things that were done wrong and then to say that I didn't know what I was doing. She even said that I used my thumbs to check the patient's pedal pulses but I didn't. I used my thumb to check for edema and then I used my index finger and middle finger to check the pedal pulses. She also said the I didn't press down hard enough to check for edema. I didn't even bother to dispute her because I think that it would only make her come down on me harder. I think that I will meet with her and talk to her about how I feel. I know that the mistakes I make are my own resposibility but I feel like just I am being thrown into a situation. She's had years of nursing experience and years as an instructor but this is only my 5th month doing this and I have not had 5 months of consistent clinical experience (last semster we only had six clinicals doing NA work). I feel like I'm just left floating out there like I'm supposed to know what to do but when other students ask her questions she doesn't seem to respond to them the way she does to me. Earlier today, I was waiting for her so I could check a blood pressure. She said that she was coming but she went with another student instead. I was walking right beside her and it felt like I was being blown off. I ended up waiting nearly an hour and finally I just stopped her while she was walking past and asked her if she could come with me to do the blood pressure and she said that right now, she had more important stuff to do (she took the other student to do a Foley on her patient even though I'd asked to be checked on my BP first but whatever). It seems to me also that the other students get to do more things as well. When I received my assignment through email last night, my patient wasn't taking po meds although everyone else's patients had at least five meds that had to be adminstered. Then later today, the doctor ordered meds for my patient. I'd already checked the MAR earlier before the med was ordered so I didn't know she had meds and my instructor almost yells at me where are my drug cards and to come on, that I had meds to give, like I was supposed to automatically know that the doctor had given an order for meds. I want to be held to the same standards as everyone else but I also want to be treated as everyone else is treated as well and I don't see a whole lot of fairness there. Last week, I wasn't the only person who didn't get their vitals right but I was the only one who got an Unsatisfactory. She gave those girls three chances to get their's right but I only got one before I got a yellow sheet.