giveface

I think for me the frustration comes in where it is well known that a certain nurse (be it either category) is very lazy, the nurse manager is well aware and anything documented just falls on deaf ears.

I think every practice area has its pros and cons, some more cons than others, obviously. I've done med/surg and psych. I have to say that med/surg workload was just not feasible and it burned me out after not too long. But psych also has its challenges, such as people with very dysfunctional ways of looking at life, the world and other people (including nurses and doctors). PDs can easily give you the worst shift in your life. And let's not even touch on how strange, miserable and awful some psychiatrists can be to work with...

I am the charge nurse responsible for a busy unit with a team model and I encounter this on almost a daily basis, as do many of the other RNs in charge. It really disgusts me how SOME of the LPN staff members can be so lazy and be grudge me because I have a pile of paper work and things to coordinate or otherwise over see in the nurses station, while still finding time to help many patients on the floor. These LPNs can't appreciate the level of stress and responsibility that goes onto the charge nurse, particularly after hours when we are the go to person for policy questions and issues. I would love for one day see these staff members just try and run the unit; they would crash and burn and panic in any emergency where they had to make decisions.

I've worked with both female and male borderline PDs. Some of the females have been abused, but same are highly intelligent and in my opinion strongly embrace "the sick role" and don't seem to be willing to function outside hospital even though in my professional assessment they are quite capable of doing same. They spend the bulk of their inpatient time monitoring/being critical of the nursing staff and dictating the terms of their psychotropic scripts to their psychiatrists. From a nursing or patient management perspective a bordeline pd patient can definitely give you a shift you won't soon forget.

That's crazy/funny, "Have you paid all your state taxes?" What on Earth does that have to do with one's eligibility to be a licensed nurse (provided there are no related criminal charges steming from same)? I am in Canada and that is pretty much the last thing our Colleges (equivilent to BON) would think about.

That is so true. Obese patients get most upset over dietary restrictions as inpatients, not medical or nursing care. Of course, obese patients still deserve excellent care. I had to deal with insulin gtts once, OMG! so complicated. It was for a alcoholism, DM, and obese female case. She almost died that time from DkA, was on the sliding scale insulin gtts for like 5 or 6 days, just to be discharged home and die at home from the same cause like 9 months later, and she was in her 50s, and we all worked like dogs to save this women, too bad. My father has an expression, "You can't help everthing that lives."

Honey, if the shoe fits, wear it. Lol. And, it is a statistical fact that I think 75% of borderline PD diagnoses are in fact female, possibly higher.

Hearing a clang at 6AM to walk down and investigate only to find a 70-year-old psychogeriatric woman squating and forcfully urinating into a large stainless steel wash basin, filling it to the brim while white knuckling her walker, and when you ask why she didn't just use the toilet she states, "I haven't a clue."

Ditto. I lasted 8 months at my first job and just couldn't tough it out any longer: too unsafe and too disrespected!

Hi All,Here I am again. I've been a licensed RN, BScN here in Canada for a little over a year. My first job right after graduation was an 8 month stint in a small medical/surgical unit, dangerously understaffed with no support workers and a large psychogeriatric patient population, with an overwhelming lack of tools in place to deal with frequent wanderers, I was completely and utterly miserable at that job and decided to quit. I enjoyed working with patients, but it was so task focused and frantically rushed, I didn't feel as though I was really practicing nursing.For about 6 months now I've been a psychiatric inpatient RN. Overall, this has been a much better experience and less stressful work environment for me, however it is a team nursing model there, and me managing other nurses as charge nurse is really tedious at best, and a down right legal and professional hazard (not to mention stressful) at worst. So, here I am again. I graduated in the top 10'% of my BScN graduating class, and I have many people willing to give me references for grad school, only problem is, I am totally uncertain on which Master degree to apply for. I do enjoy public health and particularly HIV research and policy development. In Canada, there isn't an HIV nurse practitioner speciality, and these clinic level RN positions are very difficult to get. Besides, I am pretty sure I want to leave direct patient care. If I stayed, HIV specialization would be my only area of interest, as I know a great deal about HIV and it interests me. I am not living with HIV if anyone was wondering.Anybody have any suggestions? I was thinking of M.Sc in Epidemiology or MPH, but again as I understand the labour market in Canada at this time, these choices could leave me with little more than a very big student loan?

Enough said! I can't stand this lollipops and rainbows should be spewing out of our mouths mentality that so many nurses seem to have. Ours is a tough profession and it takes a big person to resist the overwhelming urge to correct people's unruly behaviour.

I don't know why so many of the responses here are reeking of the need to give the OP a "reality check". The OP is stating that she/he has fears about entering the nurse labour market, that's okay! You were there once too. Nursing isn't a guaranteed profession like many in the public misguidedly see it to be. Many times there is a need for nurses but hopitals are facing ever shrinking budgets and just aren't employing the needed nurses or offering postings, even though in reality these positions are justifiable and required. That is why our nurse patient ratio is so unreasonable at times; the need is there but the money or motivation to offer a position just isn't. This isn't of course unique to nursing as others have pointed out. Its okay to feel somewhat defeatist at times, to vent, or otherwise call out bad and dysfunctional themes, just don't let them stop you. If you really want to be a nurse, you will be a working nurse.

I disagree and feel that it is being nosy, stirring up trouble and spying. As I stated earlier, unless I am posting privleged info (which I never do), than what photos I choose to put up, or what political or ideological whatevers on my profile are my business. That's just how I see it. Another analogy is peeping toms. Is it the fault of the person being peeped on because she left her curtains open ( of course not!), or the fault of the gross peeping, spying tom. Same principle applies IMO.

M point is only that why should you have to make and maintain two separate facebook accounts (second one under a pseudonym), simply to enable this misguided concept that employers have the right to spy on us in our personal lives, they don't have that right IMO. What I meant by the train derailment analogy, is that we don't have an "on nurse/off nurse" button when we go from a professional environment to a personal one; we are always a nurse.

Excuse me but aren't we trained to be wholistic? I am not a nurse only during my waking hours at the hospital am I? If I were driving in my car and saw a train derailment, would I get out to help the victims or just say, "Well, I'm in 'personal mode' right now, not my problem.". It isn't so clear cut/black or white.

It may not be the reality but I believe it should be and would be if nurses just stood up for ourselves and told employers to mind their own business. I am not paid to be at work 24/7, until that time comes I will continue to do what I want in my personal life so long as it doesn't affect my ability to be professional *at work*!

I have to say I feel very different about this topic than most responses here. I have always believed, nursing school included, that what you do in your own private life, so long as you don't show up to work under the influence, is absolutely uncategorically your own and no one else's business. Provided you aren't using social media to "friend" patients or their family members, or posting privleged/confidential client/employer data on social media, than what you do with it should be entirely up to you. If someone wants to think they can judge how professional an employee is based on what he or she does in his or private time, I think that says more about the person snooping and judging than it does about the investigated nurse. I find nurses to be a very self-righteous group of professionals. We are nasty and judge each other far more than physicians do same.

From what I have witnessed since I've been in the nursing world (I finished my BScN last May), including my time in school, this type of carrying on goes on more than most would like to admit. I'll tell you why this goes on. Nursing is a hard career, and sometimes, it will feel like just a job. I don't mean to discourage anyone, but I feel you should probably know this now. There are wonderful hardworking and diligent nurses out there, and there are some nasty petty b***** too! The later is everywhere: you can't escape them! My best advice is nuance yourself the work environment you can co-exist with these pariahs in. Also, refuse to work on bad poorly staffed, overworked and miserable units. I did and it really almost just turned me off of nursing; I really came so close to leaving nursing after I quit that place, with my self-esteem in the toilet. Also, there are some very self-righteous personalities in the nursing world. Don't subscribe to their BS, that is their perspective you have to keep your own. Look for employers that have a nursing specific page on their websites that explain their philosophy on nursing as a career and if they value their nursing staff. Not every hospital values nurses: it largely depends on the CEO and senior management.

Real nurses don't cry eh? Hmmm, somehow I must have really pulled one over on both my university graduating at the top of my class and passing the CRNE. I cry all the time. But mostly because I hate working with nasty judgmental people.

We just had a lady that worked at my last hospital die after being retired less than 1 year. She was not a registered staff member, but nevertheless she was drunk for pretty much her 30 years at this facility. Everyone knew and no one did a darn thing about it. And the display and the tears when she finally drank herself to death after numerous hospitalizations. I haven't seen that much denial since Amy Winehouse's death. Just saying, maybe if people were more interested in helping the individual instead of judgment and gossip and reporting coworkers, there might be more happy endings.

All I can say is that it is the group being in which the comment is being said about that gets to decide if it is hurtful or not. I personally am a gay man and I liken the use of the word f**** with the "N" word. You just absolutely never, under any circumstances use it. You just don't use it! At least to me. These are words that have historically been used to silence, trivialize, demoralize and otherwise dehumanize a specific group of people. If those who said these things only realized how they cut like a knife. I now call out other grown men on the use of the word F****. I tell them it is extremely offensive, which it is!

Bravo RN in training. Your response to this ugly word warms my heart during a blizzard outdoors. You rock!

I think this all stems from our high school system not putting a stop to this. As a gay man I can't tell you how much it hurts to hear the expression "that's so gay", even if the speaker meant it innocuously. It would be like someone saying that's so female, or that's so Hispanic. You just don't do that, especially as an educated health professional.

@Fiona59 I have seen this a few times. Some docs clearly have no idea how bad things are on the floors receiving these patients. I totally wholeheartedly agree that it is nurse managers who need to develop a backbone and advocate for their front line colleagues (us). Too often I see them with their heads in the sand and metaphorically in bed with senior management. It is disgraceful. I'm so happy for you that you get to make $106K/year and have all these fancy titles but it wasn't so long ago you were me. Its a very sad state of affairs. It has all left me wondering, and I mean SERIOUSLY wondering, if this profession in its current state is for me. I just don't think I have the stomach for it. I ate the whole "nursing shortage" baloney hook, line and sinker in nursing school.

Would rather not state the province. I am not sure how much I may have shot myself in the foot by this action as I want to transfer my nursing license to a different province and they require workplace reference. This was my first job post school, and although I performed well and was well liked (my manager included I believe), I had/have a reputation for calling them out on the staffing nonsense and I went on sick leave/stress leave for 2 weeks before quitting. So, although the majority of my 7 months there went well and garnered me some respect, I'm not entirely sure I left on good terms as it were. Although my manager did send me a note thanking me for my commitment to best practice and said she was sorry to see me go and wished me luck. Basically, I felt I had to quit as they were putting pressure on me to come back, and I knew I just couldn't come back. So now I'm doomed to keep working in this province when all I want to do is try nursing elsewhere. When I decided to quit I wasn't sure if I would try bedside nursing again, I guess it's my burden now to carry the consequences of that decision. PS:. My reason for wanting to move to a different province is more of a personal life long dream than for professional reasons, although I do feel nurses are more respected in the province I'd like to go to.