St. George

The remark is not totally off base since being over weight is unhealthy. So is smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol excessively. However, being overweight is more observable. Other contributing factors to obesity not mentioned: being married; having children, taking extra classes at school, and other necessary adult necessities. Being a Registered Nurse is an extremely difficult job that exacts many difficult Crosses to bear but there is no job that will yield better health consequences to the patient. The Registered Nurse has skills that no other health provider has; and no other health care Professional has such a broad based view of all things that impact a patient's health that if Registered Nurses ever stop being direct care, hands on providers of health care to the patient that the loss to not only the patient but also to the health care of the entire Nation that the Nation might not survive!

I would look for another job in a different hospital right away. It may take some time to find another job and there is a real possibility that you might be fired if you are not in a union. Even if you are in a union find out if there is a period when you are first hired when they can fire you for no reason. My first job out of RN school in 1978 was on an EENT floor. There was a 12 month time period when management did not have to have a reason to fire me. My head Nurse was always coming to me with complaints about my work and even though I didn't agree with her, because it was my first job as an RN I had no reference to go by. There was such a negative atmosphere that I quit after I found another Job after 10 months. After I quit I talked to a wife of a friend of mine who was a RN on the same unit I was, She said that the problem was the head nurse and not me and that I had been fine. She also said that there was a clique on the unit that included a LPN and the Head Nurse who had been a NA on my floor only 1 year prior to my starting date. The LPN didn't like me and resented that I could tell her what to do. I would do everything that Nurse Beth suggested as it is good advise but I would actively look for another job and try to get one. It seems that no matter what you do it isn't good enough and that is a bad sign.

I am so grateful for your comment. The last year I worked as a RN was in 1999. By then the staffing was so poor and the patients so severely ill that it was impossible to do a good job unless you worked so hard you were exhausted at the end of the shift and had no energy to do anything when you got home. When the funding changed so that this was the case every RN I worked with that didn't have to work in Nursing left the field!

Thank you for your comment. You are 100% correct and I apologize for what I wrote.

I did not have the option to choose when I worked during my first year of an ADRN program. I was 33 y/o and self supporting. I had 1 and 1/2 years of courses from a university in Milwaukee and was in St. Paul MN. I had to work and go to school at the same time as they did not have the student loans at that time and my starting salary as an RN at the VA hospital I worked at as a Nursing Assistant 2, was only 50 cents an hour more than my NA salary. The 2nd year I had to reduce my hours at the VA hospital because I saw that it was too many hours to do justice to my RN studies. No matter when you decide to work and or go to school, I strongly encourage a RN school student to work as a NA while they go to school at either a ADRN program or a BSNRN program because neither give you near enough clinicals to be safe when you start to work as a RN.

I think that you wrote a very kind and a very informative answer that included all of the information a person should need to understand the situation.. I worked as a RN on psychiatric units in acute care hospitals for 20 years. I am proud to have worked as a RN and especially so since I read your excellent answer.

I worked as a RN for 23 years and frequently was told by EMT persons and even EDT students on my unit to work a "clinical" who told me the same thing. I politely informed them that they had this attitude because they did not know all of the things an RN was responsible to know. I don't think than an EMT tech has even 1/100 the knowledge that a competent medical surgical RN with 5 years of experience knows. One time I was working as a Charge RN on a psych. unit in a hospital that had no ER or med. Surg. units. I called the paramedics and ordered the Hospital doctor up to see the patient that was brought by ambulance to be admitted to my unit. by ambulance who was conscious but very grey in color. The doctor arrived first, ordered an EKG, and determined that the patient was in the middle of a myocardial infarction! When the paramedics arrived, they would not listen to me or the doctor and would not look at the EKG strip that we had run. They also had trouble getting their own EKG and spent a long time at that. Finally they accepted that the man was having an M.I. and transferred to the ER of an acute care hospital and I'm glad that the patient didn't die while the EMT's delayed his transfer to where the patient needed to be. This is only one illustration of what I have seen numerous times.

I was talking some time ago to a friend's wife who has a sister that is a RN in ICU. My friend's wife said that she was concerned about her sister, the RN, because she seemed to have gotten so hard recently. I explained to her that an ICU nurse must put her emotions aside and focus on what the patient's problems are and what she needs to do to resolve the problems. I reassured her that if I was an ICU patient I would want an extremely competent RN who would save my life over one who held my hand cried while I died. She thanked me for that. What I didn't tell her but I share now, is that as a person who worked as an RN on in patient psychiatric units in acute care hospitals, I know that when a person's emotions get too high that they impair logical thinking!

What a nice plan to help you maintain emotional integrity after working a shift in an emotionally demanding profession. All of your suggestions are effective but I especially like your idea of reading the Bible or listening to a sermon, I suspect on some type of audio recording.

Relax! You are a human being and a woman and you did not leave those qualities behind when you entered the Nursing profession. I worked as an RN on psychiatric units for 20 years and always was concerned about my patients after they left the hospital but not so much that I tried to contact them, which is illegal in the state I worked in. You will grow harder with experience and not worry about patients after they leave your unit but that only comes with time. You will also develop a "clinical eye" so that when interacting with your patients you will see your patients as "part of the job", and that is good but always remember that they are people too.

I agree 100% that new grads should work at least 1 year in an acute care area as a "staff nurse" before deciding on a specialty area. I worked in 2 hospitals as an RN on medical surgical and surgical units and every minute of that experience was invaluable to me after I transferred to a psychiatric unit and discovered that, that was were I wanted to make my career.

Are all of you kidding? I began as a Registered Nurse in 1978. It has always been the case that acute care RN's consider themselves to be the only real RN's and that they are above RN's that don't work on acute care settings in hospitals. Intensive Care RN's consider themselves above all other RN's. I worked for 20 years as a RN on psychiatric units in acute care hospitals and RN's who worked on Intensive Care scowled at us if they had to come to our unit. I talked to a psychiatrist who admitted to my unit, and he said that doctors who had medical type patients did not consider psychiatrists to be "real doctors" either. We just have to "get over it". RN's are people just like everyone else and are not immune to the standard human prejudices and ego centrism. Because I was a man in a woman's profession you better believe that I encountered many RN's who thought that men should not be RN's and were substandard RN's. I appreciate that someone has initiated this topic and given me the opportunity to share my views. Whatever specialty we are in, I firmly believe that to be an RN is a great privilege and honor and that we should be extremely proud that we are an RN no matter in what specialty we work. God bless you.

I don't know what you are calling a "stigma". I was 35 y/o when I graduated from RN school and when I started as an RN. Some nurses liked me and some didn't. There was some gender discrimination because I am a man but you don't have that. A big part of the problem you talk about in my opinion is that staff nurses have so many difficult patients that they don't have time to take care of them as they would like too. Answering a new RN's questions is something they don't have time to do and are naturally irritated when they need to explain things that they don't have time to explain. All new RN's should have preceptors for awhile to show them the ropes and answer their questions. The preceptors should have no patients or a reduced load so that they have time to orient the new RN.