westieluv

westieluv has 26 years experience and specializes in Med/Surg, Tele, Dialysis, Hospice.

westieluv's Latest Activity

1. 

   I Just Can't Take It Anymore...Help!

   westieluv posted a topic in Stress 101

   I think I have taken job hopping to a new level. I am an RN of 27 years who has had ten jobs in the past eight years, some for as briefly as a few months. Seriously. The longest I have stayed at any of them was 2.5 years and that was a job doing phone triage from home that I also came to hate. I can honestly say that I haven't liked any of these jobs; the responsibility of having people's lives in my hands, the emotional stress, the ridiculous workload (I had an acute dialysis position where I was sometimes required to work 20 hour days!) and feeling incompetent because I took several years off of nursing before jumping back into the pool eight years ago...and on and on and on. I am currently working at a hospice inpatient unit which I also don't like, although I am, and always have been, very kind to my patients and their families because I don't blame them that I hate what I do. My employers have all liked me and were unhappy when I quit, but I just couldn't stand what I was doing. So here is the same old million dollar question: I feel like I can't go on anymore in nursing but I can't find anything else that I'm qualified to do that would pay even close to what I'm making now and provide benefits, and I don't have the option of working somewhere that pays much less because my husband is currently laid off and finding it hard to find a job due to his age. My job requires doing some laundry and dishes and these are actually my favorite part of the job because there's no stress and I don't have to be a nurse to do them. Help! Am I stuck? I am getting really depressed and I don't know what to do. It is 7 am and I am already feeling depressed and anxious because I have to work tomorrow evening, not even today! I feel like I can't quit another job (and I really can't because of my husband not working) but I hate nursing so much that it is taking a huge toll on me in every way and making me difficult to live with.
2. 

   Licensure by Endorsement 2017

   westieluv replied to New2CAnurse's topic in Nursing

   I do phone triage from home for agencies all over the country and am currently licensed by endorsement in 11 states besides my original state where I passed boards 27 years ago. One of the states that I need to be licensed in is California and I can tell you from personal experience that their BON is slower than molasses in January, by far the slowest one that I have had to deal with. It took over four months for me to get RN licensure by endorsement there and that was with having submitted everything correctly and not needing to redo anything. One of my co-workers said that one of the nurses at one of the agencies that we service told her that new grads in CA are waiting 6-8 months for licensure by exam, so I think endorsement is probably a little quicker. My impression when dealing with the CA BON was always that they are woefully understaffed and stressed out. They do need to hire more people, it isn't fair to nurses who apply for licensure to have to wait months and months. I have heard that CA is having major budget issues at the state level, maybe this has something to do with it. I recently needed to obtain my Colorado RN license by endorsement. The entire process took about three weeks from start to finish. It definitely depends on what state you are dealing with. Best of everything to you and hang in there!
3. 

   How to Step Down From Management Position for Family Needs?

   westieluv replied to westieluv's topic in Management

   Thanks for your reply. Unfortunately, I can't do that because it is a salaried position and the expectation is that a certain number of hours need to be worked to meet the salary requirements each week.
4. 

   How to Step Down From Management Position for Family Needs?

   westieluv posted a topic in Management

   I need advice. I work from home in the capacity of a telephone triage nurse. I like the company that I work for and they like me. A few months ago they offered me a promotion to a middle management position where I am responsible for handling all correspondence and complaints from a group of clients. I am also responsible for training new employees and correcting our employees when they screw up. I am expected to fulfill forty hours a week between these duties and scheduled hours on the phones. Recently, a very close family member was diagnosed with a horrific, terminal cancer and given 3-6 months to live unless the chemo remotely works, then she has a 50/50 chance to make it to a year from now. She is elderly and needs a lot of assistance as she goes through this and there is almost no family nearby to help. I REALLY need to step down from this management position right now, cut back my hours, and focus on family but I have only had this position for four months and I dread asking my manager to replace me and put me back on the phones as a regular staff nurse. I am afraid I will be disappointing her and letting her down. This situation is tearing me up inside. I have an email all typed up to send to her but I am afraid to hit "send". (This is the main way that we communicate in this company since we all live in different areas of the country, I have never even met any of my co-workers face to face). Help! Advice? Strength to click "send" is needed ASAP. Thanks!
5. 

   How to Tell My Boss I Need to Step Down From a Management Position?

   westieluv posted a topic in Nursing

   I need advice. I work from home in the capacity of a telephone triage nurse. I like the company that I work for and they like me. A few months ago they offered me a promotion to a middle management position where I am responsible for handling all correspondence and complaints from a group of clients. I am also responsible for training new employees and correcting our employees when they screw up. I am expected to fulfill forty hours a week between these duties and scheduled hours on the phones. Recently, a very close family member was diagnosed with a horrific, terminal cancer and given 3-6 months to live unless the chemo remotely works, then she has a 50/50 chance to make it to a year from now. She is elderly and needs a lot of assistance as she goes through this and there is almost no family nearby to help. I REALLY need to step down from this management position right now, cut back my hours, and focus on family but I have only had this position for four months and I dread asking my manager to replace me and put me back on the phones as a regular staff nurse. I am afraid I will be disappointing her and letting her down. This situation is tearing me up inside. I have an email all typed up to send to her but I am afraid to hit "send". (This is the main way that we communicate in this company since we all live in different areas of the country, I have never even met any of my co-workers face to face). Help! Advice? Strength to click "send" is needed ASAP. Thanks!
6. 

   Only Crusty Old Bats will remember..

   westieluv replied to Pepper The Cat's topic in Nursing

   This! I don't know how many Demerol 75/Phenergan 25 cocktails I drew up every week back in the day. Anyone remember administering Carafate slurries? Huge tablet, mix in a little water, stir until it dissolves and then it's bottoms up! Yuck! Back in the early '90s I worked in an urban hospital in a rough part of town. We always knew the patients who were probably dealing drugs because they carried pagers. Cell phone? What's that?
7. 

   Yet Another Post About Low-Stress Nursing Positions???

   westieluv replied to MTtoBSN's topic in Nursing

   I have been an RN for 26 years and I have never felt that I was super competent in the technical aspects of nursing as compared to the people aspects of it. I love people and could stand and talk to my patients for hours, just don't ask me to do the technical stuff because I don't like it and never have. Fortunately for me under these circumstances, I have found that hospice is the best fit for me in terms of stress level and using my best skills to help people. When the goal is not to save a life but to assist and comfort a patient and their family when life is at its end, the stress of having to be a great technical nurse goes away and I can do what I love to do, namely talk to people and comfort them. The biggest stress in hospice is probably the emotional stress of repeatedly being around dying people and their grieving families, but this is much easier for me to deal with than the stress of having a bunch of inpatients who all need something at the same time and could crash at any time, and the rewards are priceless. I never felt very appreciated as an inpatient, LTC, or dialysis nurse, but the love and appreciation that I've gotten from hospice patients and their families is unbelievable.
8. 

   Quick advice

   westieluv replied to Sweetlillove's topic in Nursing

   Believe this. I just left a position at a Davita chronic unit after a fairly short time because I was the only nurse in the building for at least five hours each day with seventeen patients on treatments. I was expected to do assessments and pass meds on seventeen patients, make a ton of phone calls (someone's access is constantly needing attention, I don't know how many hours I spent just on the phone with vascular physicians' office staffs trying to schedule appointments), rounding with doctors, and basically putting out fires from beginning to end, all while being reminded regularly that I had better be watching and making sure that the techs are doing their jobs according to policy because they are working under MY RN license and if someone gets hauled into court because of a malpractice incident, guess who it will be...not those techs! When I was the only nurse in the building and I simultaneously had a patient whose BP was crashing (60/30 and no amount of adjustment would bring it up), another patient with fever and chills because she was septic, another patient vomiting, another patient with a BP of 215/115 and a face the color of a beet, and thirteen more patients on their treatments, I decided that after being an RN for 26 years, I kind of like my license, so I got the heck out. The feeling that I got was that the whole thing was completely profit driven and about the $$$$ and if something happened on my watch, they would toss me under the bus in a minute and move along to the next warm body with an RN after his/her name. No, thanks.
9. 

   Endorsement headache

   westieluv replied to oncpalnurse's topic in Professionalism

   I currently hold nursing licenses in eleven states because I need them for my job as a telephone triage nurse handling calls from around the country. You're allowed as many as you want or need, but keeping up with the renewals, fees, and continuing education requirements in more than one or two states can get tedious.
10. 

    What's Rude?

    westieluv replied to Ruby Vee's topic in Relations

    Let me preface this by saying that this does not describe all new grads or even the majority of them, but here goes: I hate when a brand spankin' new nurse starts working at a hands on nursing job and lets everyone around him/her know right off the bat that this type of work is beneath him/her and he/she is just marking time "wiping butts" until they can graduate as a CRNA or NP. I mean, I know that we need CRNAs and NPs in the world, but where would we be without a huge fleet of dedicated, bedside, "butt wiping" nurses actually giving hands on care to their patients? There is nothing wrong or demeaning about providing basic comfort to sick human beings. Sheesh.
11. 

    What's Rude?

    westieluv replied to Ruby Vee's topic in Relations

    Co-workers who go outside to take smoking breaks repeatedly during a shift, leaving the non-smoking staff to cover everyone's patients. This is my favorite: "I'm gonna run to the bathroom", then returning twenty-five minutes later reeking of tobacco smoke when the bathroom is within a few steps of where they were working. Nurses who discuss their personal lives loudly at the nurses' station or make off color jokes or comments within earshot of patients and families. I used to work with a nurse who would yell out things like "Hey, why don't you take me out to dinner and a movie? I put out!" across the nurses' station where family members, doctors, and who knows who else could hear her. Very professional. Co-workers who call off a lot (and are not dealing with illness) and cause everyone else to constantly get nagged to come in on their days off. If you don't want to work, quit your job. You don't have the right to leave holes in the schedule every time you have a party to go to. family members who expect to be waited on as if they were the patient. "Honey, can you please bring me some pop and a cup of ice from the kitchen? Oh, and I need a blanket too." So out of line but God forbid you upset anyone who might be filling out a Press Ganey survey in the near future.
12. 

    New Grad Dialysis RN seeking advice

    westieluv replied to affablyeaseful's topic in Urology

    Generally, you will not be forced to work overtime in chronic dialysis if you have enough RNs to fill all of the shifts because unlike in acute dialysis, the chronic unit closes at the end of the day so you can go home. Most of the posts you see here about ridiculous amounts of forced overtime in dialysis come from those who work or have worked in acute dialysis, which is a whole different animal since hospitals are 24/7 institutions and patients need dialysis at all hours of the day and night. When I worked in chronic dialysis, I was never forced to work overtime, and I did it for both of the Big Two. When I worked acute dialysis for one of the Big Two, I worked as long as 20 hours in one day. That was not the norm, but 14-17 hours was fairly common in the program that I worked for because nurses would get hired and then quit because of the crazy hours and then we would be chronically short staffed. Best of everything to you, I'm glad that you are having a positive experience so far. As far as getting pigeon holed in dialysis nursing, a lot of dialysis nurses that I know started it, love it, and have no desire to do anything else. I worked in some other types of nursing before dialysis and am now working in hospice, so I have not had that particular experience. Go with what you feel. If you truly like dialysis, you will always be able to find a job and you will possess a highly trained skill that is sought after. Travel dialysis RNs make really good money because of this.
13. 

    CE Courses

    westieluv replied to nerdynurse7's topic in Professionalism

    As the PP said, each state has their own set of required CEs that need to be completed during each renewal cycle. So for example, if you got your license in August, 2015 and it is due for renewal in August, 2017, you have that two year period to obtain the required number of CEs for your state board of nursing. The nursing boards generally don't have the time or manpower to check on each and every nurse to make sure that he/she has obtained the required CEs, so they use an honor system where it is assumed that you are abiding by the rules and completing your CEs but what they do to keep people on their toes is run audits on random people when they renew their license. I am licensed in Ohio and I was audited once back in the early 2000s. The Ohio BON basically asked me to submit to them copies of all CE certificates that I earned to prove that I did what they required of me to keep my license. In 26 years of nursing, that is the only time that I've been audited. There are a lot of places to get CEs, just google "nursing CEs" or "nursing CEUs" and you will find plenty of resources. Some of them cost money, some are free, it just depends on where you find them. The companies that generally provide them will also allow you to print a certificate of completion when you complete them which you keep in case you get audited and need proof that you completed them. The certificates are dated so that the BON can tell if you completed the course during the correct license renewal period, as opposed to collecting old certificates and submitting them over and over to avoid getting fresh CEs.
14. 

    Apheresis exp. required for Inpatient Dialysis RN?

    westieluv replied to CCK RN's topic in Urology

    OP, have you considered seeking employment as a apheresis nurse minus the dialysis? I mean, find a job just doing apheresis, get trained, work there for a period of time, and then try again to get into the acute dialysis program that you want to be in? I realize that this would mean changing employers again in a year or two, but then you would have the entire package that they are looking for and they should snap you right up. On the other hand, you may find that you really enjoy the apheresis position and want to stay there. Honestly, it doesn't look like a bad gig, I remember the apheresis nurse from our local Red Cross coming in and running patients when I was working inpatient med/surg and she loved her job. She wasn't dealing with chronic renal patients and all of their "idiosyncrasies" (to put it diplomatically) most of the time and she highly recommended her job to all of us burned out med/surg nurses. I'm not saying that just because that nurse liked it you would too, just maybe something to think about since you seem stuck between a rock and a hard place right now. I don't think you would have any trouble getting hired because of your recent dialysis experience, and they would certainly train you as most nurses don't have apheresis experience coming into it. As I said, the Red Cross hires nurses for this type of work, I'm not sure who else but you could just go to a site like Indeed.com and do a search for apheresis positions in your area. BTW, for what it's worth, I agree with you about D*****. I won't go into detail, but I will never work for them or F******** again. $$$$ over patients, just like so many other organizations these days.
15. 

    dealing with rude doctors?

    westieluv replied to 2016New's topic in Relations

    Back in the late '90s when I worked acute care night shift, we had a doctor who nobody wanted to call after hours because he was absolutely hateful. One time one of my co-workers called for orders on a newly admitted patient and this doctor said sarcastically, "Are you retarded, or are you just drunk?" A few months after that lovely episode, this doctor, who was also a huge flirt and hit on any of us who were remotely young and attractive, told me in a way that suggested that I join him sometime that he always went home and got drunk after a long day seeing patients. Light bulb on! I'm kind of naive about these kinds of things, and it made me realize that even doctors are just people and have all kinds of personal issues that affect their behavior that we don't necessarily know about. What I'm trying to say is what the others said, basically don't let a jerk ruin your day when you know that you're doing the right thing. What always helped me in situations like this was picturing what would happen if I didn't call about something important. Then nasty doc would be even nastier and totally throw you under the bus for not calling. You can't win with some people and it is them, not you. And BTW, as the others said, I think your post was just fine. : )
16. 

    FMC CAP program

    westieluv replied to G8torgrlRN's topic in Urology

    I used to work in a Fresenius chronic unit but I went back to acutes before I had to worry about the CAP program, because if I remember right, you have to be there for a certain period of time before they require it. I did see that my co-workers who had worked there longer than me were stressed out by having to do the extra stuff on top of their already busy, busy job. They were making posters, giving little lectures to the techs during their lunch breaks, and all that kind of nonsense, just to earn the points or whatever to climb the clinical ladder. I don't mean to sound negative, but I thought the whole thing was just added stress and nonsense, considering all of the other tasks that we were required to get done in a given week or month. I always felt like it was one of those "brilliant" corporate ideas designed by non-clinical suits in office suites.