Shaka

I am a long term nurse and have always done assessments. If I chart that I did one and didn't it is lying, number one, which is an integrity issue in my mind. I have to say that I don't wear a stethoscope around my neck. It gives me more stiffness in my neck and back which any given shift does on its own. I actually had my stethoscope stolen,a cheap one, so I use what the hospital has or borrow one. My area is OB and there is always a supply of them around. The other frequent occurrence is not being able to do all of my assessments immediately after I get report. Again, if I have a problem.....orders to be completed, admissions or a crumping patient, I may not get to it until a couple of hours into a shift. The main thing is that I don't chart what I don't do and if I didn't do it, I don't chart it. I recommend that you continue doing what you do, PA's. Never mind what others are doing, it is your face you look at in the mirror, expensive stethoscope or cheap one.

My thoughts on the swine flu: I believe we all need to do some research on information about the last swine flu panic. Though the statistics are presented to support fear and panic, it is only briefly mentioned in some published articles that the individuals that have succumbed from the current flu have all had previous, major health problems. They were compromised before they acquired the flu. I see this as a way to use information to assuage the general population by presenting a biased use of statistics. Unfortunately, the general population has limited knowledge of how our bodies, immune response, or understanding of our health status that includes a state of wellness not just disease, except in limited, fragmented bits of information they acquire on the internet or in social settings. There is information on the internet about the 1976 swine flu panic and the effects of giving vaccinations that were not subject to rigorous testing prior to use. The reasoning behind this is that there is not time though this is not supported by many of the scientists that are producing the vaccine. Google it for yourselves to read all that is available information. I have known individuals who developed severe, life altering reactions that they have had to live with the rest of their lives after receiving the vaccine in the seventies. The current plan is to inoculate individuals without doing a human study......it is a repeat of history. The UK will be the first to be given the vaccines as this is where they are being manufactured. There are also numerous articles that contain information about the virus itself. I think it is important to use reason when something that effects all of us, and is planned to be instituted as mandatory, being given to us in a biased manor. I personally am trying to promote reason rather than fear. We as health care providers need to take the responsibility to do this as well as teaching individuals how to maintain healthy immune systems which is the best defense for all of the bugs that we live with in our world. This is important as our diet and lifestyles, as a society, are poor and lacking to provide this defense, which is sad when we have the most availability of nutritious food to achieve this as well as volumes of information to live healthy.......physically, mentally and spiritually. My question is why this approach is not promoted as fervently as the fear?

I too have come to the place you are. I have taken over a year off after working for 36 years in this profession. Unfortunately, these feelings in me created a great amount of guilt, as I always felt my work as a service to humanity. I began to isolate myself on my time off, not wanting to carry over my work into my "life". Trying to separate the two led to a life of isolation though I was very productive gardening.....and I had my two dogs, the birds and nature which seemed to be the only thing that regenerated my energy. When I began releasing all that I had acquired to let go of nursing, I believed I would not return to it again, I sold and gave away everything I had accumulated in my life......house, dogs, gardens....stuff. I let the car I had go back to the bank and took what I could get for the house. I then moved to Costa Rica. I lived there for 10 months in the rain forest, during the rainy season, which created a place of living life force, offering itself to me in healing presence. I then began the process of looking at myself, being open to the discovery of who I am, digging as far down as I could to try and understand what I had chosen to do with my life. There came a point where I realized that I needed to come back and assist with the transition of our country during this time of change. I write all of this to let you know what one nurse's choice has been in dealing with what they call "burn out". One of the things I have understood about our profession is that the art of healing, soul to soul, is not in the equation. We have created a society of victims that only seek energy outside of themselves to live. We are not taught nor do we teach self responsibility. As nurses at the bedside, it is our energy that is most readily available for those who have depleted their own by the choices they have made in their lives. I could feel it when I would walk into the building where I was working. It was heavy and draining and I had to brace myself against it. It felt like a suction machine was stuck on the "on" switch. No way to live in my mind. We, as nurses, are responsible to the hierarchy of the intellectuals that have created a monster of extraction of energy from those who work in the field of health care. Nurses are trained to be fixers and doers which goes against the nature of being. We are not responsible to fix anyone but ourselves and cannot do otherwise. We are subject to rules and regulations that are put in place to do this, consequently we work under a cloud of failure before we can even begin, which creates a sense of failure from the get go. This is what caught up with me after so many years of not honoring what I have seen as the time has passed by. Like everything else in this world we have sought the solutions outside of ourselves, butting our heads against the wall in unison. I watched as my peers worked on the verge of tears or a state of hardened apathy toward what they had invested their lives in. I talked and listened to what was said and felt, trying to introduce new ways of approaching our work, to no avail. I can't tell you how many times if I had personal problems at home. It has been hard for me to believe the resistance and denial that steps up when something is falling apart before our very eyes. I am in the process of re entering the nursing field. I am free of debt and have bad credit so I can't get back into the scheme of living a debt based lifestyle. This one of the traps I fell into working, making a good living wage. I ow have boundaries on what I will do for the money. I need little to thrive in this present society and time to find my own creative avenue, through looking at all of the information science is offering us, outside of the box, to be healers of souls not creators of victims. This is my priority and what I agreed to do when I first began my professional journey. I feel clearer about who I am in the greater scheme of life and will offer that as I perform the tasks that are asked of me in this over regulated, narrow thinking field of health care. My priority is to offer my compassion and understanding first and foremost, knowing that each of us has the right to choose how we live. I feel strong enough to support that choice in others, without guilt or feeling of failure. I offer support and courage to all of my peers in nursing who are experiencing anything like what I have written. I have written a small pamphlet that gives a holistic method of regenerating our energy for those who can't make changes in their immediate circumstances. I have spent a lifetime of studying our spiritual aspect and dedicate myself to including this in the healing energy that I offer as I resume my profession as a healer of the human condition. Blessings to us all......

If the truth be known, what are we going to do now. I have a Hopi friend who says the answer to all of the chaos that is reigning down upon us, due to our passivity and lack of integrity in the past........is to Pray. I am praying for all of us....I suggest we all do this.

I am a 37 year RN and was making $29.85 after working there for 3 years....it was a rural setting that had a sign on bonus plus incentives to work overtime. The full time weekly hours were 32 and there was a $10.00 per hour for any hours worked over 30 per week. There were also evening and night differentials but no weekend differential. I made $66,000 the last year I worked there. It was a good salary by comparison to other professions. I worked my *** off the majority of the shifts I worked. I believe we all should start thinking about what we are going to do when the corporate companies start making their 2 trillion dollar cuts or medicare spending is cut or medicaid spending is cut......these are all proposals to curb the huge health care expenditures which do not allow for health care coverage for all Americans:a presidential campaign promise. We may all have to adjust to a new mind set for being in the nursing profession....we all need to be paying attention to this, uniting in the formulation of what we want to see happen to us as we will be the first effected as the changes come down the pike......and they will sooner that we think.

Thank you for being you.....responsible in your commitment to do the best you can in what you chose.

What we are seeing the integrity of nursing being lost in the many changes that have led us to the present state of the profession of nurses. In the past 30+ years I have worked with a majority of nurses who are feeling the extraction of their energy into a system tied to money, usury, corporate rules and the legal system. It is being run by intellectuals who have chosen to deny, avoid, or hide from the original ideal of our roles as healers. What you are hearing is the whale of the people who are at the working end of the machine.......the deliverer of all of this madness.....the practicing nurses in the field. The sacrifice is becoming less and less tolerable. We have become no more than technicians of the machine - business, technology, pharmacology, intellectualism, and the legal system. There has been an an attempt along the way to change this by the introduction of alternative methods of treatment but they are so "managed" it is difficult to get any application accepted in the the system. In working with other nurses, I sense the despair.........too heavy of a work load as nurses have chosen to leave for their own survival, too much paper work to protect themselves from the legal demons, too little respect by management, peers, including physicians, and patients. Consumer driven care has led to this. Poorly educated consumerism at that. We live in a debt driven society and someone has to pay. It is time for change. It is time for each of us to soul search our own intention and motives for why we continue in this profession. If we don't it will lead to an even greater effect to the detriment of all of health care, if it can be called that. There are many things that we can do for ourselves, as we are all needed. We must foster this in each other as no one else is going to. We are to be honored for what we have chosen to do in the drama of the human condition which is deteriorating rapidly. By finding this within our own minds and hearts we will grow stronger or fall into the quagmire of confusion present in our world that is experiencing massive changes. By using and applying the new information that is being discovered and proven through quantum physics we can gain a new perspective on who we are as humans and our relation to the world we live in. We must remain open, honest and allowing to have the eyes to "see" and the ears to "hear", within ourselves first and then apply this to the art of healing. We are more than we have believed we are by far. :redbeathe