hangin'inthere,RN

I wouldn't be worrying so much about the time committment as I would about whether or not there will be jobs when you graduate. Graduated May '09 and still don't have a job. Many of us are in the same boat. Good luck.

The thing that sucks, and I actually had this confirmed by a recruiter....is that hospitals are hiring traveling nurses who of course are already experienced. Those, coupled with the older nurses who should have retired but didn't because they lost their 401K's in the downturn are taking the positions that would have been filled by us new graduates. I asked the recruiter, "but aren't you afraid that when the economy gets better, the traveling nurses will start traveling again and the others will retire?" She said, "Well, I AM!!" Which says that recruiters are worried about the fallout when things get better, but that the administrative pencil-pushers aren't. These idiots still haven't learned their lessons from the late 70s-early 80s, and the early 90s fiascos where they did the exact same thing in an economic downturn. Know what happened? Yeah, the economy got better, they lost these nurses back to traveling and retirement and were left with a short nursing staff and then started screaming at nursing schools that they weren't pumping out nurses fast enough. Ridiculous but true. Anyone wanna bet its gonna happen again?

I see two things. One is that it appears that the auxilliary staff are not doing there jobs. I only just graduated, but from my experience working as a tech it was always our jobs to do this sort of thing and if we didn't we were quickly reminded that it was our jobs and we needed to get busy about it. The second is that you need to remember that for many older people a trip to the hospital is like a trip to the spa. They are probably lonely at home, so when the get to go to the hospital, it is like a treat because of all the attention and company they will get. My grandmother, after my grandfather died was that exact way. She could not wait to go to the doctor because of the attention she received when she was at his office. Not only that, but she even had a clock that she would mess with, make it not work right, then have to take it to the clock maker in order to get it fixed...once again, extra attention. It got to the point to where the clock make told her not to touch it again. My point is that these are lonely people and probably looking for attention. So, pass it to your techs and CNAs to take care of the small stuff so you can focus on what's important. One last thought. Have you talked to other nurses on the floor to get a sense of how they feel? You may not be the only one. This is a concern you may want to take to your manager, especially if there is more than one of you who feels this way. That way you could come up with ideas as a unit, as to how to deal with this problem. Good luck to you, I hope you get it worked out.