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Naturally Brilliant BSN, RN

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Naturally Brilliant has 4 years experience as a BSN, RN.

Naturally Brilliant's Latest Activity

  1. Naturally Brilliant
    There isn't one. This is Texas.
  2. Naturally Brilliant
    I work for a Texas public university system's hospital as a staff RN, and today I hit the six-month mark where I'm off the probationary period and am now a permanent state employee. Yay! :-) Which union should I join now? I'm a socialist and strongly believe in unionization, but I'm not sure which is the best union that can represent myself and other nurses.
  3. Naturally Brilliant
    I've been working at an adult county inpatient psych hospital for 5 months now, and I don't feel very comfortable where I'm at. It's very frustrating - I work nights, and it's daily drama for me. My mentality is that I have to do my assessments and get this crowd of people medicated, including PRN sleeping meds, so they can go to sleep and I can prevent chaos happening on the unit. I worked three nights in a row over the weekend, and each night was misery. The first night, two patients got into a fight with each other within an hour of me being on the shift, and one of the patients was screaming at me while the special team of techs was protecting me. The second night, the supervisor had me go to a different unit and medicate the first night's group of patients because that unit's nurse didn't have access to the Pyxis machine. The third night, another RN's patient ended up clawing my arm and then spitting on my face later on. And I am drained! Most psych patients are alright, but there's always a handful that will constantly act out, or are just hardened criminals, or are so profoundly psychotic that it's just mental torture where I wish they were stay in their rooms, shut up, and leave me alone. It can often be demoralizing because you can do all that "therapeutic convo" and whatnot, be nice to them, and thirty minutes later they find some imagined reason to go off on you. It's just so stressful and tiring, and I don't want to end up with PTSD later on. I'm afraid that I'll end up mean and jaded as time goes on with this. Plus, it doesn't help that so many techs and nurses I work at are lazy or incompetent, and I feel resentful that I'm filling out restraint paperwork on a patient that isn't even mine. Are there better areas of psych?
  4. Naturally Brilliant

    How would you feel if a dentist was your boss?

    Naturally Brilliant replied to FrancineRNfrannie's topic in Nurses

    Alrighty, I signed it
  5. Naturally Brilliant

    Am, I in over my head or out of my league?

    Naturally Brilliant replied to cjp1994's topic in LPN/LVN Students

    There's an old adage: "Do you know what they call a medical student who graduated last in his class? Doctor." Don't waste your time comparing yourself to others. Get the grades in school you need to pass and get the job you want afterward. Your classmates won't be paying your bills, anyway.
  6. Naturally Brilliant

    I cant stand the attitude of many nurses

    Naturally Brilliant replied to Lostsoull's topic in Nurses

    We nurses are often on "the front lines" of patient care, which can mean that when patients and their family members gripe about one of a billion different things (the majority of which we never had any control with to begin with), they take it out on us. And then we can often have issues being understaffed, or with unresponsive management or administrators. And we can feel overwhelmed by a seemingly new process that we have to implement with next-to-no training. And we can have insubordinate or lazy techs, whose failure to do their jobs end up reflecting on us since we are the licensed people caring for those patients that they failed to get vital signs on because they were having too much fun chatting away with each other. And then we can have co-workers that are flat-out unhelpful and aren't always the team players we need for them to be to get through our tasks. And then we can put 110% effort day-in, day-out, and do hundreds of myriad tasks in a given shift, only to get a nastygram email from a manager or supervisor the next day over the most insignificant thing. And then we're asked to give retail-style customer service to an industry that is based on a contradictory non-retail message (i.e., sometimes in order to get better, you have to put up with some discomfort to get back to health). Do you get it yet? We are not always nice when not-so-nice circumstances impose themselves on our work.
  7. Naturally Brilliant

    Consider The Benefits of Being a Mentor

    Naturally Brilliant replied to Maureen Bonatch MSN's topic in Nurses

    Sage advice, Maureen. I find that it helps new nurses (not necessarily new to nursing per se, just new to a certain speciality) to be able to write down their concerns and questions and share them with the mentor. We get so preoccupied with tasks and patient care during our shifts that it becomes very difficult to solicit advice then, so it's helpful to commit what we need to pen-and-paper so we can find out about it later on.
  8. Naturally Brilliant

    Rant: Feeling like the worst nurse ever

    Naturally Brilliant replied to 2018nurseandbeyond's topic in Nurses

    People shouldn't be yelling at you, though. That's unprofessional, uncivil, and you should tell them that if they do that to you. If they persist, tell management about it. People will give you the respect you deserve, as they say.
  9. Naturally Brilliant

    Adultitis - Yikes! What is This and How to Cure it???

    Naturally Brilliant replied to traumaRUs's topic in Nurses

    This sounds like an article written in The Onion. Adults acting like serious adults should be celebrated, not condemned. We take life seriously because there are a heckuva a lot of adults who make very poor life choices (be it drugs, or toxic/abusive relationships, or poor impulse control) because they wanted to live life "in the moment" or for the "experiences", and we don't want to be those type of adults. What happened to self-discipline and acting one's age nowadays? For the record, I'd rather have a patient (or anyone really) think I'm too serious and respect my dedication to professionalism, rather than think I'm being flippant, immature, and thus concerned that I can safely care for them. To me, being serious is a matter of self-respect, not a matter of being a square. And we as adults choose to have fun with the people and situations we feel it's okay to have fun - not because we are insecure and don't want to come off unserious.
  10. Naturally Brilliant

    Everyone is white?

    Naturally Brilliant replied to eacue's topic in Nurses

    I'm going to echo the above commenter - what discrimination are you facing? Personally, if I were going to stay in a hospital system for the long-term career and wanted to go up a ladder (I won't), diversity would be a factor in my decision-making. Years ago, before I was even a tech, I worked at an HCA facility and all the corporate people were middle-aged white guys (note: I am not a white guy). Then I did some research on the company and found out that the HCA CEOs ended up Republican U.S. Senators (note: I am not a Republican). So I decided long ago that should I choose to go corporate, HCA was not the place for me. But since I'm not doing that route anyway, it's a moot issue.
  11. Naturally Brilliant

    medical spanish courses/classes

    Naturally Brilliant replied to painmeds's topic in Nurses

    When I lived in Austin, I took the Travis County Medical Society's Spanish Meducation course, which is taught by a superbly wonderful woman! However, with work and school commitments, I ended up not attending the last few classes and didn't have the self-discipline to actually study it. Oh well. At least I've got Duolingo
  12. Naturally Brilliant

    I've Been Employed at 7 Facilities as a New Grad RN

    Naturally Brilliant replied to Shookclays's topic in Nurses

    Doesn't the on-boarding process for a new hire (e.g., drug screens, paperwork, badge photos, etc.) usually take a month or so, anyway? I mean, unless you're applying for a new job a week into a current job, I don't even see how you can logistically fit that many jobs into a year. Don't get me wrong, I'm a Millennial, and I can't see a single person in my generation being in the same job for more than 10 years (you're kidding yourself if we'd be at the same nursing job for our entire career). And in fact, I left my ICU job (the one that I had as a new grad) after a year and five months because I felt targeted by my manager (getting called into her office monthly, and then justifying myself made me feel like the "writing was on the wall"). However! I do think there should be a process where you've aired your grievances to management several times before you leave a job. Think about a bad relationship - assuming it's not abusive/dangerous, wouldn't you want to bring up the issues you have before calling it off? I get the sentiment that people can find themselves in jobs that are simply a bad fit, but I would presume the mature thing to do would be to list all the concerns you have, pen-to-paper, and then check in with your supervisor and/or manager to go through them. If they get angry and defensive, then you know you're in a toxic culture, but if they're open to exploring what has been done and what could be done to patch things up, then you ought to give them a real chance, I say. But no doubt, one has to be mercenary in America because the employer will happily exploit you to the hilt unless you develop leverage (i.e., marketable skills) and can skillfully negotiate what you want with a reasonable exit strategy if they won't do hardball.
  13. Naturally Brilliant

    Rant: Feeling like the worst nurse ever

    Naturally Brilliant replied to 2018nurseandbeyond's topic in Nurses

    I think those nurses that are in prison for murdering NICU babies or for deliberately killing adult patients in the hospital are some of the worst nurses ever. Relax! You didn't hurt anyone, are trying your best, and plus, conflict is inevitable when you work with other people for an extended period of time. "Nothing personal, just business", as they say!
  14. Naturally Brilliant

    Houston Physican Assistant racist comments

    Naturally Brilliant replied to Snatchedwig's topic in Nurses

    I grew up in Houston in the 90s, and moved back to this city after about a decade in Austin and San Antonio. Houston's indeed the most diverse city in America, but sadly, I find that there's a lot of self-segregation that goes on (growing up, it was the norm for white kids to only sit with other white kids, black kids to only sit with other black kids, etc., and interracial dating was somewhat rare). It's really sad, because there are a lot of narrow-minded folks out here that will only want to associate with people of their own racial group or skin color. A lot of the dating profiles here, I've noticed, will say "whites only" or "whites or Hispanics only". People can associate with whoever they want to, but it's really sad to me. I'll probably end up moving back to Austin or go somewhere out West as soon as NP school's done with. It hurts my heart that my hometown hasn't really evolved so much the way I'd have wanted it to by 2019.
  15. Naturally Brilliant
    I started work at a psychiatric facility nearly 3 months ago, and I'm starting to miss my old nursing job (I worked in acute inpatient dialysis). Sure, I had bad days as well as good days, but you were largely left to your own devices, and as long as you got the job done, you went home, no drama. I'm not asking for constant accolades or relentless (even false) positivity, but nastygram emails about "You forgot to hit 'complete' on a progress note" come off as annoying. Eventually I'm sure it'll become demoralizing to the point where I'll think, "You know what? Take it or leave it! My work is what it is!" and apply elsewhere!
  16. Naturally Brilliant

    Should I not work overtime hours if I'm a salaried Exempt employee?

    Naturally Brilliant replied to Naturally Brilliant's topic in Nurses

    Okay, I found out the answer! I do get overtime pay after 80 hours. Since my schedule is built in for 84 hours every two weeks, I get time-and-a-half for the extra 4 hours each paycheck. Anything over 80 hours gets time-and-a-half. So it's good if I want to do overtime! I'm likely going to quit my NP program in the coming days, so it'll be good for me to work extra at this new job anyway and bank in some money. I'll have to take a look at my upcoming paycheck to find out what the pay looks like
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