SjoeRN

I have worked nights for about two yrs on a Med/Surg floor. I usually stay up late the night before the start of my 3 12s, and then try to only sleep for a few hrs during the day after working my last 12hr shift for the week. It sort of works, I find myself rarely being able to get up early after that last day. Also, I usually stay up until 2-3AM on my days of and then sleep in late. Some are better at "flipping" than others, but the current situation works for me and my wife who is also a nurse and works the same shift. It all depends on your home life.

I "vented" to my manager this week, about this issue, along with some others I have been having with how my floor works. Concerning this team of patients, all he said was, "yeah that was a pretty bad team." I questioned him about acuity based nursing and he said that it didn't work. "If we did that you would end up having 7-8 patients at a time." Instead of the 5-6 that I normally have. I told him that if acuity based nursing doesn't work, what we're doing isn't working either. This is my first nursing job, been there about 3 months, but I have thought about leaving because of this. I know everyone says to stick it out a year at least and then move on, but I feel that I have valid patient safety concerns. Trying to hit the year mark isn't worth it, if it costs me my license. This week I only had one confused patient but I had to sit outside of her room because of her wanting to get out of bed all night. She probably needed to have a sitter. I felt like my others patient were neglected.

Just wondering if anyone else has these kind of problems. I had 5 patients last night. 4 out of the 5 were "ringers". Patient 1 had dementia, would call out because she was worried no one was there. Patient 2 had MR and needed help to the potty chair four times, wouldn't use the call-bell, would just starting yelling, off and on throughout the night for help. Patient 3 was confused and would hit the call bell often for no reason at all. Patient 4 was flaccid on her left side and called to be put on the bedpan to pee about 15 times during the night. I ran all night, and was dead tired the next morning. Four of the patients had FSs with one of them being every 4 hrs. CAs don't work at night, the clerk leaves around 900pm and the charge nurse leaves at about midnight. And to top it all off, another nurse that i often help out when she is busy came up to me about 4 hrs into my shift and asked if I was doing okay since I had more patients than everyone else. Two of the nurses had 3 each, another 4 and at least one of them also had 5. WHAT? I talked to my manager about instituting some kind of acuity based system and he just said that they had done it years ago and that it didn't work. "If we did that you would have about 8 patients apiece." As it stand now, i come and get beds, say 20-24, and it doesn't matter what kind of patients are in those rooms. Is this normal? We are suppose to have at least one CA during the night if all of the beds are full but usually when I come in, there around 6 empty beds, which are soon filled by the middle of the night, so I have only seen a CA work 2 times at night since i started working there in November.

It shouldn't disqualify you. It might be a state-by-state thing but I had interviews before i took the NCLEX. If the hospital has a graduate nurse program (which it seems, few hospitals still do) you could start working now. Likely, if you get an interview and it goes well, you could be offered the job contingent upon you passing boards. They would then hold the job for you until you take the NCLEX. If you didn't pass, then the job would probably go to someone else. Hope this helps.

I feel you. I am still on orientation but have so much trouble focusing and attempting to multitask, that I have begun to question whether I might have ADD. I recommend writing everything down until it all becomes more familiar.

Thanks for the replies. I think working at both is a good idea that I never really thought about.

I appreciate everyone's comments, especially the first one from janfrn. I found it interesting that you mentioned it sounded like I had already made up my mind about leaving my current position. I was actually leaning the other way, but after re-reading my original post I see how it could have been interpreted that way. I think I will probably give my current job at least a year before I would switch anywhere else. I'd like to eventually get into Home Health and it doesn't seem like I will be getting much dressing/wound care experience at my current position so I might find something more medsurg focused eventually. Again thanks for the posts.

Hello, I'm new to this site and this is my first post. I am looking for some advice regarding my job situation. It took me about 2 months to get a job after passing my boards. I applied to all of the local hospitals, had a view interviews, and eventually got a job about 25min from home at nice/new hospital. It is not the specialty I was looking for but I couldn't keep waiting around for the 'perfect" job to come along. I have been on orientation for a little over a month and just got a call from another local hospital about an interview with them(which i had applied to before getting my current job). It's not the specialty I wanted either but it does pay about $2500 more /yr not to mention I would be going from 36hr/wk to 40hr/wk and would bring in more money because of that as well. My wife works there, which means we could possibly share the commute (which is about 45min). It is also where I had my clinicals during school so I am already familiar with the computer charting system they have in place. The computer charting system at my current job is dated to say the least. It is probably my biggest frustration. Finding lab results took me about 10 seconds during clinicals at the other hospital, at my current job it takes at least 1-2minutes, with me trying to navigate through the equivalent to MS-DOS. But my manager is great, the other staff is helpful, and it it is closer to home. I'm just worried about burning bridges this early in my career. Any thoughts are appreciated. If I gave proper notice, do you think anyone would hold any grudges? Also, my wife and I talked about having a child within the next year or so and planned on her going per diem, so the extra income this new position would offer is appealing. Thanks