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You know, though, there are different power dynamics at work in your sister's situation. An attorney of any status in a law firm has a lot more power over the clerical staff than one new staff nurse does anywhere. Cattiness and pettiness are endemic in areas where people feel powerless and trapped, so they build themselves up by tearing others down. It's sickening, and nurses do practice it to the nth degree, especially on hospital units (big reason why I'm no longer employed in acute care settings). It ceratinly is not unique to nursing. I've spent a lot of time working in family literacy programs, you'd think the women there would be supportive of each other given all they've been through, but noooooooo. Can't wait to start ripping each other apart at the slightest provocation. I guess the only thing I would say is that YOU can't control anyone's behavior, only how you react to it and what you do about it. If someone is a jerk, it's a reflection on them, not you. I don't understand, in this era of the nursing shortage, why nurses choose to stay in jobs where they are abused and unhappy when they don't need to.

There's no excuse for harassing people, and even less for lying to them. I guess I have a much lower tolerance for abuse than most people, because I would have given notice the next day. When I interviewed for my next job, I would have told them exactly why I quit the last one. There's a nursing shortage, folks! We don't need to put up with this nonsense.

We make mistakes. Fortunately, most of them don't kill people! Your physician needs immediately to take responsibility for writing her own orders completely and you need immediately to stop doing it for her.

It's about 40 or 50 miles from York to Portland, all turnpike though. There are actually quite a few small community hospitals in the York/Dover/Portsmouth area. Portsmouth Regional is probably the largest and is always advertising, especially for nurses to work in their cardiac surgical unit.

I am an RN instructor who does not work full time in a hospital and never intends to again for all the reasons above. However, the difference is that I GOT OUT OF IT!! There really is no reason, as an RN in 2005, to stay at any position you hate-there are oceans of opportunity for us beyond hospital confines if you just get out and look. And please do not use the fact that you hate your job as good enough reason to be rude to students in your midst. I will continue to protect my students from people who feel martyred because they CHOSE to be a nurse and CHOOSE to stay in a job they hate.

MMC probably has the best program and never tires of letting everyone within earshot know they were voted one of the top 100 hospitals in America. It's the only teaching hospital in the seacoast area, I believe. Just so you don't die from the sticker shock, the cost of living around here is astoundingly high (I live in the Portland area) and Portsmouth is worse.

If you are looking for staff positions, you shouldn't have any trouble. If you are looking for NP, CNS, instructor positions the well is pretty dry around here and I wouldn't recommend it. Salaries aren't bad but the cost of living in York and Cumberland counties is outrageous, as is any area along the coast.

Thank you for sharing your experience. Obviously part of the issue is that you just had too much for one person to safely do. I am a firm believer-and research backs me up-that for the most part, unless we are completely incompetent (and there are a few incompetent nurses out there, folks-it's not all docs with those issues!) if we are given adequate tools we will do a very good job. This means adequate staffing, equipment that works right and can be found, and adequate administrative support. Yes, while it may ultimately fall to you for not adequately assessing your patient, it's a systems issue more than a competency issue, and it would be a good example to take to your practice committee when you're advocating for more staff, etc.

I'm a nursing instructor in an A/D program, and I disagree w/many of my peers that new nurses need a year of med/surg to "learn the ropes." That's unfair to the unit, the manager, and the hospital to just put your time in and move on (although that's what I did, many years ago...) If you love psych or O/B, there's no reason to waste your time in med/surg. I do tell my students if they're not sure to go for med/surg, because they will get a lot of exposure to different types of patients and may just end up loving it. It is hard, physical work though-for me that was the major downfall.

Have you considered a refresher course before going back into the work world? might shore up both your skills and your confidence.

Oasis is not typically required on pediatric patients.

Hi, Melissa, I've been in home care for ten years, first as a staff case manager in a nonprofit Medicare certified agency and now as a clinical specialist in a private pay for profit. You can feel free to contact me if you'd like. I never get tired of talking about home care!

I've been a nurse a long time now, and currently work as a gerontological care manager and part time nsg instructor at the local community college. In no other profession-not even medicine-do you have the diversity of choices that you do as a nurse. I hear people all the time in this forum and elsewhere b*tch about their units, the hours, etc. I don't have any sympathy for it. I hated acute care too, which is why I moved out of it as quick as I could, but I'm still a nurse.

I just wish we spent less time talking about doctors in these forums. Do you think they spend one tenth of the energy thinking about us as we do thinking about them?? They're coworkers and colleagues is all, just like the PTs and social workers. I have also found over the years that most of them, if you act professionally and know what you're talking about, are very respectful and easy to work with. Some fo them are real jerks but surprise, surprise, so are some of us.

Bingo. It is not doctors who abuse us. Most of them don't even think about us that much, or at least not nearly as much as we think about them. In 17 years of nursing-admittedly most of that in home care and now education-I can think of maybe two times I was spoken to disrespectfully by a physician, and one of them was just an arrogant bunghole that everyone hated. Usually it's the whining, *****y barbs from your peers that you have to put up with every day that wear you down, and was the prime reason I left acute care nursing-NOT the behavior of the physicians.