October97

I have a love-hate relationship with my job. I am a peds nurse and enjoy taking care of children. For the most part my co-workers are great. There is generally good teamwork, but there is one crew of nurses that when you get them all together it is a long and frustrating day. I have switched to working only on weekends just to avoid that crew. It has helped, however now our management is getting bad and taking out their frustrations on us nurses. Again, working on the weekends generally helps me avoid all their crap. If I ever have to stop my weekends only schedule, I would probably have to make a job change.

We as nurses need to be careful with thinking every one who appears to need a lot of pain medication or has a high tolerance is a drug seeker. My husband has back problems and was a "frequent flier" in the ED for a long time until someone finally figured out what was wrong with him and has proceeded to try to fix it. It was very annoying when nurses and doctors treated him as a drug seeker when his had tears coming out of his eyes and BP as high as 202/119. I got a whole new perspective on how we treat pts when I was on the other side as a pts wife. A pts pain is what they say it is (I know, some people milk it for all it's worth), especially when the vital signs also back it up.

I've been a nurse for 10 years and I am at the point where just thinking about going to work makes me want to vomit. The only redeeming thing about my job is that I work with children and I love kids. Their parents however I could do without. We are required to do hourly rounds and recite some scripted dialog about what can I do for you, I have the time. HA!!! As if I have the time to even go into each room every hour. What a hoot!! I HATE being a nurse more and more with every shift because of all the administrative BS that interferes with our job. Leave me alone and let me provide the best possible care I can for my pts and I will do a great job. Get in my face and attempt to make me do customer service scripts and I am going to forget something really important, like to check your IV or your pain med, but hey, who cares about pain meds, let me get you a coke and an extra blanket. Hope I'm not offending anyone, but I think a lot of you feel my pain.

In my neck of the woods it is about 50-50. Some parents are great, stay with their kids, take good care of them, easy going, ect. Others just leave their kids for us to take care of and go out on the town and we are their babysitting service. When they do show up it is almost inevitably when I haven't had a chance to get back to their baby's room to feed and change him and it is right at feeding time so he is screaming and diaper is soiled and the nonexistant parents want to bless me out because of this while meanwhile I have been dealing with someone else's left behind screaming baby and no carepartner to help. These are usually the moms who have their hair all done up, fingernails pink and green and 3 inches long, dressed in their club clothes and did I mention it's 0300 in the morning. Sorry to sound negative, but I'm just keeping it real. You will have all kinds of parents. You will have to bite your tongue so many times. I really enjoy taking care of children, but a lot of the time it would be better if the parents would just go away and let me take care of their kid and I will call you when it's over.

I would take the sure thing. If you really want to work in Peds and end up having to take something else because your dream job doesn't work out you are going to kick yourself. Just my 2 cents. Like the previous poster said, you can always apply for you dream job with a little experience under your belt. Maybe even get your PALS certification and work at the guaranteed job for 2 years then get Peds certified then you will have a great chance of getting in wherever you want.

I'm in it for the money too, sad to say, but gotta pay those bills. I love most of the children I take care of in Peds, but I would NOT do this job for free. I don't care if I were a billionaire, it is too mentally taxing.

I am a pediatric nurse and have been for 7 years. I don't have the opportunity at this time to go back to school, but I have some advice for you. I would continue in school and get your BSN. Then go to work as a nurse for a few years. Get some good solid experience under your belt. Then cut back your hours or go into a position with lots of flexiblity such as weekend option, where you work only on the weekends and get paid for full time. Many hospitals have these types of shifts for people who have been there for a few years and this would provide you with time to work on your studies during the week. I would not become a practitioner in any specialty without a few years of experience in that specialty simply because as a practitioner you carry a lot of responsiblity with the decisions you make for the patients. In nursing, actually doing the job is a whole different animal than what you are taught in school and your experience nursing will help you make better decisions for your patients once you are a practitioner.

Wow, that is crazy!! I would just keep looking until I found a real RN job. This amt of money is ludicrous for the job we do. Yes I am an experienced nurse and it has been a long time since I was a new grad, but the job is just too stressful for that low compensation. I could go be a cashier at a store with no stress, no worry of making a horrible mistake, no ones life in my hands, no one's urine, feces, vomit, ect on my clothes for that pay.

I have been a nurse for 10 years, working peds for 7 years. When I first started on Peds I was nervous just like you are talking about. I don't know if it is this way everywhere, but I work on a general Peds floor, like med-surg for Peds. We each get an assignment of 3-5pts depending on acuity and shift. This is generally less of a pt load then in the adult world thus actually allowing you to have more time to check doses before giving meds and such. Also, if you are super busy and still need to take the time to verify doses parents are usually understanding when you explain to them that sorry it is taking you a little extra time, but you want to make sure their child's med is the appropriate dose. We also have a satelitte pharmacy on the peds floor so we can go to the pharmacy window if we have a question about something we can't find the answer to. You will be surprised how quickly you will become familiar with dosages and appropriate meds and treatments for the different diagnoses that you will encounter. In general children don't tend to have all the chronic conditions that adults do unless they are born with a specific syndrome or disorder. You see a lot of the same things over and over. You will quickly become proficient, especially if you are smart. If you love children, then go for it. I encounter so many people who say, "how can you do peds?". Nurses who truely care about the children will have the patience and genuine compassion needed for this specialty.

I pay $850 per month for my "employer-sponsored" health insurance. This is for me and my family of 5. Our deductible is $1200 for family, $600 individual. Copays for regular dr. visits $20 and specialist $40. I can't afford it because by the time they take the $850 from my pay there isn't enough left after regular living expenses to cover the copays. Then there is always a bill that comes later and that winds up going to collections because if I can only afford the insurance, barely the copays, how in the world am I going to pay a bill also? It is ridiculous. I work in NC. I used to work in NY at a unionized hospital. Had to come to NC for personal reasons, but NY was way better, only about $60 per month for family coverage and free, yes free medical care for employees and their families if treated at the hospital where we worked. I had my kids there, all for free, received one anesthesia bill and that was it. This country is in a sad state of affairs where healthcare is concerned. I am going to work taking care of the children of people who don't work (I am a pediatric nurse). They get medicaid, therefore their healthcare is free. I can't even hardly live for trying to pay all of our medical bills and I am working. *** man.

I am so sorry to hear how you were treated. I totally understand, I work Peds and also frequently get pulled to the NICU when they are short staffed. I have had a few instances where the parents just get out of hand. I know they are many times overwhelmed and exhausted, scared and worried, but we are trying to help their child, not hurt them. I wish they would realize this. We are supposed to do bedside reporting with the family if they are present involved in report. It is VERY difficult. I wish we could go back to the days of going to a separate room and listening to report on the tape recorder.

I work this at my hospital. It is weekend option and at my job it means 2 shifts on the weekend. Any shifts fri night through sun night. We make almost double time for nights on weop and time and 1/2 for days. I like it.

You sound just like me and I have been a nurse for 10 years. You have the interest, but you also have a tough skin and you have to for this career. I would definately say you should go for it and I would say to go straight for your RN. With LPN your options are going to be very limited. Mostly LTC facilities. For your interests you need to be a RN. Also, if you don't want to hear the constant complaining from hypochondriac pts, try pediatrics, or better yet NICU. If the children complain, there is usually a good reason and you feel more compassion for them and in the NICU, well, they can't talk yet :) Good luck to you!

Working nights on Pediatrics and this one night we got an insane 9 admissions. We were all running around like crazy so when things finally calmed down around 0530 we decided to play a joke on our charge nurse. One of the nurse's got into a bed on a hall where we had no patients, turned on the IV pump, hooked up the cardiac monitor. Another nurse told the charge nurse that when she went to that room to get a pillow there was someone in the bed. I thought our charge nurse was going to have a heart attack. She ran over to the room and all we heard up at the desk was "I'm going to kill you!" It was just what we all needed to not take our crazy night too seriously and everyone got a good laugh, even the charge nurse, after she recovered.