daytoday

In my opinion, some people thrive as nurses in the hospital setting, but for others it will crush. your. soul. I did almost three years in hospital setting, oncology and heme/onc. I learned so, so much, it was invaluable training for a new grad. But by only 2.5 years I knew I had to leave the bedside, or leave the profession altogether. I'm a good nurse, and I worked in excellent hospitals and had many positive experiences alongside the bad - I appeared to thrive. But I felt I was dying on the inside, the setting was definitely not for me. I found a way to leave the bedside and I am so much happier, still working as an RN and using my knowledge in a different setting. I recommend getting as much bedside experience as you can handle because of the excellent teacher that experience is, and then looking into other options.

Oh, I feel you. I did a little over a year in Oncology, then a year in Heme/Onc at two major hospitals, with a very attainable goal to move into BMT ICU. In fact, I was asked to apply for it - I changed my mind. I moved into hospice telephone triage - in an office building, at a desk, in a room with about five or six other nurses, all of us basically handling an entire state. Are the patients and families still demanding, are people still demeaning? You bet. Would I trade my hospital experience? No way- I worked with some of the most incredible nurses I have ever seen, my experience was a true trial by fire that literally MADE me, MTV style- I wouldn't even be capable of triage without that time. But I would have to be in very dire straights to return to hospital bedside nursing. Patient safety, my own safety, and massive amounts of stress with impossible task loads were my reasons for leaving that environment, and in nearly a year I have not regretted it for one second.

I love this question, I've been thinking about it a lot lately. 1) I get s*** done. I am extremely productive. I'm actually kind of obsessed with getting as much as possible done in as little time as possible, and I get frustrated when other people don't extract information, plan projects, or even converse in that way. My spouse tried to explain the circumstances surrounding his headache at dinner to his family and I just couldn't sit through hearing the situation described, questions asked, interventions offered- so I broke it down in one rapid-fire 60 second report, and my husband's family looked at me like I was crazy. This is new; I did not used to be so obsessed with productivity and efficiency: time management at its finest. 2) I also am more acutely aware of safety issues and danger, as I think someone else mentioned. My heightened situational awareness has made me wonder how I ever survived my twenties. It has also made me want to stay home A LOT in my time off. 3) I have a nicer home and car. When your secondary family income > your primary, this can happen. Nursing generally pays us for our suffering, which is nice. 4) I am more withdrawn, and more alienated from loved ones. I crave alone time, silence, peace. I'm not sure if this has to do with having children or becoming a nurse, as both happened at the same time for me. 5) I am much more confident and assertive. I already had those qualities, but they have really been honed. I consider that a huge positive.

Ok, first of all - nursing school is the worst. It's just the worst. There is nothing wrong with wanting to pursue a different career, I've considered it many times. Part of what makes nursing school so difficult is not just all that must be learned, but the rapid changes you are going through as a person- because the process of becoming a nurse absolutely changes you as a person. Oh and the same can be said tenfold about the first year working as a nurse- WOW was that hard for me. However, it's also incredible to see what you become capable of in such a short amount of time. I knew I wanted to be a nurse, but becoming that nurse caused me an enormous amount of stress and considerably lowered my general enjoyment of life for years. That's a fact. I have even said that I felt shell shocked in my first year working as a nurse - depending on what you go into, witnessing so much human suffering and death, getting your hands bloody like that can really be very traumatic. But I wouldn't go back and change it, because it has made me so tough, so fast-acting, able to process information so much more quickly than ever before and act appropriately with decisiveness and confidence. These days I don't work bedside and I'll admit that I am glad. I no longer have panic attacks before work, I like my job, and I feel comfortable in my role as a nurse - it got better. I guess my point is, if you feel that you may want to continue nursing school, I think it's important to realize it probably will not get better right away, it may get worse for a while, but it may be very much worth it in the end. You just really do have to be committed to the long haul, I think. Also, I wanted to quit over and over and over, not so much in nursing school, but definitely in my first job - I wanted to leave the entire profession! I'm glad that I didn't. Just my two cents!

These stories are amazing. Reminds me that we all go through so much that is unseen. The first time I decided to take prerequisites it was for LVN school, and I was 22. I was paying for everything on my own, and working full time. I was involved in a car accident and suffered a brain injury to the left frontal lobe and temporal lobe of my brain. I lost my job, because of my inability to function, and eventually had to move in to my parents house. I had severe judgment impairment, memory problems, processing problems. What I thought was just a car accident turned into four years of cognitive rehab, and unspeakable damage and loss of friends and general respect because of my drastic personality changes and poor judgment. When I started taking prerequisites for an RN program it was seven years later, I could only take one class at a time, and I had severe panic attacks every day because of how stressful it was to try to make my brain do things that it literally had to form new pathways in order to do. The damage was so drastic that I had been declared fully disabled by the government. When I got into nursing school, I told them about my brain injury in my interview, and my plans to succeed without disability exceptions to prove that I could work without exceptions. That's exactly what I did. Every day I could feel my brain changing. It was remarkable. At the very end of my next to last semester, five months before graduation, my brother died of a drug overdose. I still don't know how I finished after that, I cried on my way to class and clinical every day, sometimes in the middle of class. It felt like drowning. I did finish, I passed the NCLEX on my first try, and I got into an excellent residency program. I cried every day on the way to work for an entire year, and was pregnant/nursing a newborn throughout my residency- but I did that too. On an extremely high acuity floor with tough staff. Now whenever I've interviewed for new jobs I get hired, because I know that I can do anything, and I don't have to tell my interviewers any of these stories for them to know that too, I think they can just tell that I am extremely capable. Hardships change you, but sometimes, over time, they make you better.

I have worked on a general oncology floor that required this type of report, and I regularly had to hand off six patients from night shift. The pt load itself was barely manageable, we regularly had charting left to do after report. We had a two page checklist of everything we had to do in report, in order, and management followed us in the morning, marking what we hit and what we forgot. We also had to check all orders in the computer, and discontinue orders appropriately. If anything went wrong- like an IV that infiltrated at shift change, a pt in need of pain meds, we were expected to do that as well before leaving. I'll be honest, it was a disaster. I understand the concept of preparing for the next shift, but at some point your shift has to end- not all loose ends can be tied up before shift change, nursing is a 24 hour job. In fact, most of our codes and falls happened at shift change, because the nurses were so tied up for over an hour giving/getting report! Not only that, but on top of everything, before we could even start getting report, we had a huddle at every shift change that regularly took 30 minutes. So shift change started at 0645, and was usually over at 0815. True story. I worked at another hospital on a heme/onc floor, where report was much more effective, and usually done in 20 minutes. The night shift nurses had four or five patients to hand off (better ratios), we got report at the nurses station or outside the room at a computer- if oncoming shift had any questions about orders on the computer they were answered right there, then we went in the rooms, looked at IV/ports/PICC sites, checked fluid bags and pumps, looked at any wounds together, introduced ourselves, asked the pt if they had any questions, and would let the pt know pertinent things, like "I told Sally you'd like to ask your doctor about..." Or "Sally is aware that your second bag of chemo will go up this afternoon..." Etc. If they were asleep, we did not wake them. Ever. We could communicate our professional report to each other much more effectively away from the pt, while still keeping the pt informed about their care. All of our patients had an excellent grasp on their care plan. It was a GREAT method, and just as I was leaving that job, they were starting to implement "full bedside report" and shift change huddle.

This is definitely not true. As a new grad ASN RN I got a job at Piedmont Atlanta, and was being recruited by Northside within three months. Emory would be more difficult due to Magnet status, as is Kennestone. (Magnet goals I think? Not sure if they got it yet.) Grady, Piedmont, Northside, Wellstar Cobb, Tanner, Wellstar Paulding, and CHOA are all hospitals our graduating class went to work in, some in NICU, ER, ICU, Oncology, L/D. There are more, I just can't remember. We had absolutely no problem. Also I'm still an ASN RN working at a large Magnet University Research hospital, in a specialty that requires BSN, with multiple job offers under my belt and recruiters calling two years after my graduation. I'm completing my BSN, did ASN first because I could get in and get done faster- but do whatever works for you. An RN is an RN, and if you're a good nurse who interviews well, you can work - trust me.