nite-owl

Thanks everyone for your input! It's nice to know that others feel the same way, although it's a little sad at the same time. People wonder why there is a nursing shortage!? Oh how I long for that fresh out of nursing school feeling, like I could take on the world. I'm going to look into some different options as far as scheduling maybe that will help me.

Hello all, Lately I have been feeling a bit burned out. Sad thing is I've only been a nurse for 3 1/2yrs. I work at a hospital on a 21 bed pediatric unit and I love working there when it's actually pediatric pts I'm caring for. We are required to take overflow adult pts, lately more frequently since summer we see less kiddos. Some of the adults we get are not always appropriate for our floor, but when we complain about this nothing happens. A lot of times we hear "well any nurse is better than no nurse," really?! That doesn't make me feel better, I worked hard for my license and would like to keep it!! And if these pts aren't coming to our floor we are floating to adult med surg units. Everything is about budget budget budget now too so there's many a nights when we work without staff that we should have. Any words of encouragement, do I just need a new place of scenery?

I work on a 21 bed pediatric unit and our charge nurse always takes a full load (up to 6). It can be hard , in fact if it was up to me I would probably never charge. It wouldn't be so bad if the cn didn't have to take more than 4pts or any at all then I would actually feel more helpful to my other nurses. Some how though we make it work we all have a really good team concept and it just flows (most days).

Thank you all for you're input.

Need advice please! I'm being asked to attend a root cause analysis on a pt. This pt came in with migraines nothing was helping after a week was going to be transferred to a different hospital with a neuro dept. The previous night before i took care of this pt she developed incontinence episodes of confusion and had starring episodes which continued off and on through the following day (docs were aware of this). When I rec'd pt behavior was approp, later that night incontinence began again and pt would only follow a few commands all vs stable. Notified two docs one came to write orders then left without seeing her the other would be in first thing in am. So when doc came in in am they suspected she was seizing. Pt was later transferred to icu before going to other hospital. I've never been involved in an RCA and don't know what to expect, it's just scary.