BRK97

Now, I've had this happen before with PO meds (which our instructor doesn't go with us for), to which I'll fess up that I just had a brain fart or something like that and tell them I'll recheck and be back. But this time having the instuctor staring right at me made too scared to fess this up. So I took a guess! (and of course it was wrong.) STUPID STUPID STUPID!!!!!! You really shouldn't beat yourself up so much. We are all human and make mistakes. However, I think that your prof would have appreciated it more if you would have said, "I'm sorry, I blanked. I need to go look it up again" rather than guessing at the answer. But at the same time, now you know that it is always better to admit you don't know and then go find out the "right" answer. If you have learned that lesson from all of this, then of course you deserve to graduate.

Sorry! Not much help. We don't hire travelers any more and very little agency.

To cry over a loss is human. Don't ever lose your humanity and caring spirit regardless of what other people may think.

There could have been an underlying complication starting that you may not have been able to see. The only thing you could do was see if the medication worked or not and advocate for better pain control for your patient. If you are transferring care, it becomes the responsibility of the new nurse caring for the patient.

I know a girl who passed on her 4th try and she is a very smart and compassionate nurse. Are you too anxious when you go. Your anxiety could be making you not think clearly. Get some student help on test taking tips, etc.

I don't mind having foreign doctors. I get annoyed when I ask them to repeat things to ensure that I do understand what they are saying and they get mad at me for having to repeat it again. I'm sorry, but for patient safety, I need to know that I understand what they said, even if they have to repeat it several times.

I really don't feel that they are in the financial crisis that they are presenting outwardly. The real slap in the face is that they give away all this stuff with their logo on it and have fairs and giveaway litlle appliances, etc. At every staff meeting we have a ton of food. For different events, they have raffled off Plasma TV's. I would just rather have them keep their toaster and pay me more money for the work that I do. + I really love my job and my co-workers. It's almost like having another family. But then again if everyone leaves, I guess we will just be one of those dysfunctional families...

I am curious as to what an average salary wage would be as well. I am an RN and work in a small community hospital.

I love triage!! I sometimes consider it to be the equivalent of the Walmart greeter of the ED!! HAha! I just don't let people get to me. I can be a real passive aggressive b!t(h if you know what I mean. And I am sorry, I never bump people up because they are complaining unless they truly need to be. I think that sets a precedent of the squeeky wheel gets the grease and I don't want to model that for the other people in the waiting room. I just try to explain why they have to wait in a nice way. But I also feel that I have a good back-up in our ED. Security will not tolerate any violence, verbal or otherwise. And if it comes down to it. A MD will see them and rule out an emergency and then their butt gets kicked out. We hardly ever have that problem.

I work in a great community hospital. I truly love my job and what I do, but of course, I sometimes get frustrated. But in general I really do love my job. In recent times, many changes have occurred. Almost all of our nursing leadership has changed hands. Because of the changes that they have implemented, many people are frustrated. Many nurses have left, and I mean really a large portion of our seasoned nurses with 20+ years experience have left. I think that alot of the ideas and initiatives are good, but the communication doesn't filter down well and the way they implement things is not the best. Some of the big problems--benefits!!!!! They reconfigured the way our benefits are covered and it leaves a lot of people in a bind. I am a nurse and make a decent wage, but I really feel sorry for our housekeeper who spends almost 1/2(not kidding) of her paycheck to pay for benefits and then still has to pay a rediculous amount for meds and treatments for her dying husband. I also feel sorry for the LPN who still has to pay $400/month for oxygen for her asthmatic child. And the child really needs it sometimes. She had to buy a pulse ox (who knows how much that cost) and check her frequently. It is nothing for her kid to be in the 80's just because her lungs are crappy. Another big problem---bonuses!!!!They don't want to pay nurses what they are worth. They just completely cut out agency (at least in our department). Mind you this facility had nearly half of their staff accounted for by agency about 1 1/2 years ago. I could understand if they cut back and tried to fill holes with staff and what not, but they just cold turkey stopped agency. So a couple of years ago they started bonus contracts. They would pay staff nurses extra money to guarantee so many hours of OT each week for about 13 weeks. They worked well because the bonuses were worth it. But about 6 months ago or so they decided to do this e-bay bidding on shifts in the computer (a % bonus per shift). The contracts stated that the program could be stopped at any time. However, they cut off people in the middle of their contracts, which really upset some of my co-workers. And you know if the employees didn't honor the contracts from their end there would be hell to pay. So now if I bid on a shift for say 20%, a co-worker can bid and say that they will do it for 15% and so on. To me, that is like cutting the legs out from under each other. I know that there is a budget that has to be adhered to. I really do understand that, but it seems like this facility is willing to sacrifice nurses, really good nurses, to save a few pennies. About a year ago, they decided to not let weekend option work OT. Our weekend option staff make a higher wage for working 3/4 weekends. Most W/E options in surrounding hospitals make a good wage during the week as well, even if it isn't as high. At our institution, if you are a W/E option and work during the week, you get paid whatever your regular base rate would be. At our facility they decided that W/E couldn't work OT because they didn't want to pay the OT on the W/E rate. There were and are still so many holes in the schedule because as noted above we went cold turkey without agency. So many of our W/E people sought jobs per diem during the week elsewhere. So they were perfectly willing to let well able capable people to go fill the holes in somebody else's facility rather than their own. Meanwhile, leadership pushes and pushes professionalism and meeting hospital goals and forcing the clinical ladder. They want everyone to be on a committee or council or whatever. Trust you me, I am all for that I truly am. I consider myself a professional and I am looking to enrich myself with a rewarding career, etc. I encourage growth in others to the best of my ability. I know that everything as far as that goes is to implement a better patient experience and that's why I became a nurse. So that I could take care of people. It just seems like they want you to do all of this work and be penny pinching at the same time. Of course, people want to know what the economic reward will be for moving up the clinical ladder or for other job performance issues will be. Whenever we ask about the rewards to be given or complain about all the underhanded above changes, the generalized response is "if you are chasing the dollar, this isn't the place for you!" I am sorry, but I am truly offended by that statement and what it implies. If I was "chasing the dollar", I wouldn't be here any longer because trust me there are more dollars to be had elsewhere. And it is a lot of work to meet the professional goals, etc, so of course with the history we have had over the past 2 years, people are leary of doing all that work to get nothing for it. I really hope that leadership is buying new scrubs because at the rate that they are going, they are going to be working the front lines soon enough.

Not sure if magnet really increases job satisfaction or not. I sometimes feel like leadership tells us that's their drive when really they just want to get another accolade for the hospital and want to motivate us to work for it.

One of our ER physicians actually copied this from a journal and placed it in our break room. It is very warming to know that we are appreciated by our er physicians, who deal with a lot of the same crap as well.