Neurotic Student

ugh I didn't even get a key chain at my newer job. At least I got a gift card at my last job, and I was actually thrilled when I got that gift card.

I get what you mean. I feel like I'm in a similar position. I almost got a year in med-surg, and I'm gonna leave it. I finally got that one year experience and I don't ever want to work in a hospital ever again. NEVER. I'm thinking about what I should do next, if I should go back to psych or trying something else. I won't have a job lined up when I leave but I don't care. I started out in psych and it wasn't too bad, it depends on who you work with though and your pt population/acuity, but not as stressful as medical hospitals with their shortstaffing and expecting the RN to be responsible for everything.

I am sort of a new grad to nursing and I've contemplated leaving several times. I am seriously considering it. A lot of reasons discussed here are true. Fortunately I haven't really been bullied as others have. I just can't stand the expectations, the stress is overwhelming. I believe myself to be inherently prone to stressing out anyways. It is considered the nurse's fault for everything. Your aide didn't do this? Why weren't you monitoring your aide? Medication isn't there, gotta go pick it up from pharmacy, and now almost everyone's meds are late. Pt asks for water, oh I can grab it real quick, much quicker than trying to hunt down the aide to tell them. Got the water, now pt wants an extra blanket. Now there's only one aide on the floor and 3 of my pts are urinating almost hourly or Q2 due to the IV fluids running through them but they are fall risks so they'll either use the call light or set off the bed alarm. I do 12 hours shifts but on average they are 13-14 hours. Giving/receiving report is typically >30minutes, unless I only have 3-4 reports to give and it's the same nurse. These are some of the few. I'd rather take a pay cut for less stress, and I probably will go that route.

I have three 60-year-old coworkers working 12's. A lot of us actually call upon them for help on our hard IV sticks!

It was either my second to the last year or final year of nursing school that I had thought of quitting. After I got a lecture from a nursing school friend, I decided not to. Now 7 months into my first acute hospital job, I once again thought of quitting. It started from a small fantasy to a serious deliberation of quitting. Not only quitting my job, but quitting nursing. Nursing kinda makes me want to have a job where I won't be stuck with a patient for 12 hours for 3 consecutive days in a row. When I have a terrible group, it makes me dread going into work more than I already do. I called some family and friends, some of them told me to quit and some told me to stick it for a year. I'm going to try to last a few more months. After all, that's all I need to make a year. The place I work at has nice, supportive people too. I find it kinda sad that I'm leaving because I can't handle the demands/stressors of the job rather than bullying. I would feel less ashamed and guilty if I was leaving for being bullied instead. I worked psych for 2 years, so I may go back into that. I loved the people I worked with and the teamwork we had to put in. It's far less stressful. I want to go back t o psychbut I haven't explored other kinds of nursing either, and I'm afraid that if I venture into another type of job, it'll be another that I hate again.

Wow I don't think anyone can top the first response! I like to workout, go watch bodybuilding/powerlifting/strongman competitions or conventions, and hopefully travel more in the future. I already have some international plane tickets bought, but I need to do more domestic traveling too. I've never been out-of-state. I've been to Las Vegas, but I don't really count that. I wanted to buy a motorcycle too, but everyone I tell advises against it. I remember one professor too, he said after working in the ER, he sold his motorcycle.

We submit our schedule for the next month. We are required to work 2 weekends of each month, but I heard it's not strictly enforced for us because we have enough people working weekends. I'm one of those that work every weekend. I like the freedom of submitting my schedule for each month because I can rearrange the my work days if I needed a weekend off, so it's not like I'm forever doomed to weekends. The only thing is that I need to know like a month ahead if I need that weekend off.

Would you rather tell a coworker you farted or that you take antidepressants? it's not as uncommon as people think but a lot of people hide it..

I signed up as a nursing student thinking that I will never come back here after I became a nurse (or quit nursing school). Neurotic because I have neurotic tendencies.

In the acute medical, no I haven't noticed much difference. In acute psych though, I will be in high acuity unit all-male pts any day over all-female pts. Males there are less likely to hit females, but if male pts hit anyone, they are going for the kill. The female pts hit to mostly get back at you and they do a lot of biting, scratching, hair-pulling, spitting, kicking. They like to cry, scream, and yell.

I followed general precautions and never felt unsafe. It depends where you work and who you work with. I worked 2 years and only got hit once but it didn't hurt because pt was small, developmentally delayed, and he did it mostly to intimidate. I worked in a private hospital but I heard that county hospitals get the worst psych pts. Pts are put into different units depending on their acuity and level of functioning. You can work on the lower acuity units, which are mostly pts with depression, bipolar, or substance abuse issues but some of them will deal with psychosis also. There's a lower chance of violence but it's still possible because you never know and also the acuity units get full sometimes and we send our "best" high acuity pt to the lower acuity unit. I had a good experience due to the people I worked with, so I really loved psych, at least at where I worked at!

Sad that we cannot disclose this but it's so rampant. I know my workplace has told me they have this help program thing where you can go talk to them about personal problems and they are supposed to give you resources or guidance. But according to everyone's advice here, nobody should go use that program haha. I have outpatient years ago in the past but I also wouldn't disclose it at work. I don't really disclose it to people in general anyways. They asked me in the employment forms I filled out, about disability/chronic illness and in parenthesis they put for example diabetes, bipolar, depression, etc. I'm not falling for that trap so I put no.

I've been orienting in M/S for 4 weeks now on nights, and I don't feel like I'm getting up to speed as the others hired in my group. I'm in a new grad group despite not being a new grad. I know I shouldn't compare myself to others but I do that to know where I need to be at in my progress. I've got 2 more weeks to go. I want to know how I should be doing this to get up to speed. I relocated and brought all my books with me but the book is just too much and it's different in the hospital. The book doesn't tell me that I need to walk my pt on the day post lap appy, that his diet should be clear liquids after sx, and that I should notify the MD in this case and what orders I should expect or ask for. The book info tells you to notify MD if IV infiltrates but I noticed that a nurse just discontinued the IV and started a new one. It's like reading the book only indirectly helps 50%-60% of the time. When I'm getting report, I don't really ask any questions because honestly, I don't know what to ask. I don't know what significant questions I should ask. The person giving report is usually already giving the standard info (dx, hx, code, IV fluids, accuchecks, etc.). They talk so fast that I'm scrambling to write it down and don't have time to comprehend what I was told, but I write excessive info because I don't want to not write something down and later forget it, or I'm writing down something I didn't understand so I can look it up later. I admit initially I am mentally slow due to anxiety and doubts but physically I can move fast. That doesn't help though when my thoughts are paralyzing me physically. I don't think I am a dumb person but I'm not exceedingly brilliant either. When the tasks due keep piling up continually, I lose sight of what's important to monitor about my pts (e.g. I didn't want meds to be late, then pts asking for pain meds, then lots of documentation, and then I forgot to monitor 2 of my pts's urine output and one of them turned out to have oliguria and had standing orders for fluid bolus.) I relocated for this job and I want this to work. It has to. I was confident that I would make it in my initial weeks but now doubt is setting in. Now I often question myself if I will make it, even though I somewhat think I can. These thoughts are becoming invasive and affecting me on my days off. I feel like I'm 2 steps back from being on edge, but not quite there yet thankfully. I'm not at that stage where I cry, but I want to make myself cry as a release just because I feel so uncomfortable everyday. I never feel well rested but I have no problems falling asleep. I just have problems waking up. What do you recommend I do to enhance my progress? Or even some reassurance. Please help. Thanks.

I've got 3 more weeks of training left, then I'll be on my own. I'm also getting lots of anxiety on my days off and the day before work. I have some nausea too but I haven't had the feeling of wanting to cry. Maybe I'll get like that when I'm off orientation. I'm only scared that when I'm off orientation, there's going to be a time where everyone's busy and nobody can help you. When it's time for med pass, everyone is busy. I'm not questioning if I made the right choice, I'm questioning how long will it take till I get better. Am I making adequate progress at this time? How am I supposed to know.. They say everyone learns differently, learns at a different pace, but you can't be making itty bitty progress over the span of a year!

Whatever you do, don't fall into that dangerous trap. It's bad if you are facebook friends with your nursing group, and they post that stuff up. That's why I stay away from FB!! Do you ever come here on allnurses and see a whole bunch of posts talking about "omg should I choose hospital A, B, or C? This is so hard!" lol while I'm here getting rejection letters. I had a hard time finding a job too when I graduated, while everyone else in my group pretty much got into good new grad residencies in big hospitals. However, I ended up in psych as my first RN job and got the opportunity to work with amazing people, improve my patient-interaction skills, and dabble in calling MD for orders. I wouldn't have had it any other way. I think I would have died of stress if I had straight started in the acute hospital. Now I am less scared in my new job in an acute hospital. I am grateful for all of this. Right now there's another nurse in my new grad new hire group that has been starting IV/drawing labs while I have not done any. I know she has done it before in her previous job, so that's why, but it's hard to not feel a tinge of insufficiency. I just tell myself that my time will come. I'm not even a month in yet, so I'll have opportunities later. It's not about the job, it's what job fits you. I will never do pediatrics or ER. There seems to be a certain type of people fit for ER and I'm not one of them..and that's okay because everyone can't work in ER, there would be no other type of nurses. We need all types of nurses. Remember to revel in and celebrate your own successes! The more I did that, the better I felt about myself.