cmathews40

The real answer is that hospitals take the money that they pay out to agencies as a tax right off. They don't have to pay the insurance prems such as workmans comp. The agencies have to cover their nurses themselves for that. According to the high ups in hospital admin. it comes out ahead for them in the long run to use agency nurses. :)

Very well put Mark. Hang in there Diana, learn from your mistakes it will make you that much stronger. The people giving you a hard time will find someone new to pick on soon enough. It is sad that nurses tend to eat their young.[ QUOTE=MarkHammerschmidt]Hi Diana - as a certified old, grey, battle-ax ICU nurse, let me throw in my two cents. A while back a coworker of mine made a med error: she miscalculated the drip rate of an infusion. The patient became immediately symptomatic, and the nurse realized what she had done and fixed it right away, but it was quite scary, and of course the story whipped around the unit like they always do. I talked it over with her a few days later - she told me she was ready to quit. She's an excellent nurse - here's how I tried to talk her out of leaving: First off: what kind of nurse would you be if you didn't feel bad about having made an error? This is actually an important point for you in your ICU practice. The point is, and this is what I told my friend: you can't become a veteran without having gotten a few wounds in battle. Nor can you omit certain things - like making your postop patient completely naked, briefly, and looking at absolutely everything going into, out of, or that's connected to her. Some lessons you learn the hard way. Here's the secret: EVERYONE, without exception, does that. The hardass nurses just did them a long time ago...and if they're mean, they'll just make you feel like crap. There's a lot of that in nursing. My stepfather was in the Pacific War, and he used to say that there were two kinds of soldiers - the ones who'd been in combat, and the ones who hadn't. But there's no way to get from newbie to veteran without going through tough experiences: you have to actually traverse that distance, and it changes you: it makes you cautious, careful, wary. And much stronger. That's exactly the way you want to be in the unit. Here's the other thing: get right back on that horse. If you allow yourself to stay thrown, you'll never learn to ride right.