twilite

In response to Goodbye to Nursing for me.. It seems like a lot of people think we stay in it cause its a challenge and we like a challenge and that sort of thing. My own take on it is that speaking formyself and mnay of my friends. when we initially got into nursing we thought we'd be little Florence Nightengales, helping poor sick people get well, comforting them, feel as though we'd be making a difference and contributing to the well being of our fellow man. What it actually turns out to be is quite different than that. Of course once, you've invested the time, energy, and money to train to be a nurse, and you start getting a little bit of experience, you feel as though you absolutely can't just "leave" furthermore, we make life choices based on our incomes that we depend on from nursing. It's not a fortune but its better than a lot of other jobs out there, and lets face it, we all need the money. We then fall into the trap of thinking someho we're not "good enough" or "fast enough" or patient enough, and start running our own selves down from there. Lots of us that go into the field tend to be co-dependant personalitites who try to fix ourselves by focusing on fixing others. The rewards of gratitude from our supervisors, fellow coworkers, patients, families etc. it usually not readily forthcoming, so we push ourselves even harder chasing that carrot of recognition and appreciation. However after a time we slowly realize that no matter what we do enough is just never enough. We learn that "everything" is our fault. Even if what is expected of us isn't even humanly possible. But they persist in putting the guilt trips on us anyway, (us being women and known to be nurturers) They manipulate us, denigrate us, and if we do get hurt on the job, it's usually met with annoyance and attitude as to how it must be "our fault" that we got hurt. We aren'tallowed any of the common courtesies enjoyed by many other jobs or professions such as "are you feeling any better?", its usually "when will you be back to work again, because of YOU, the floor is running short, patient care is suffereing". Sorry folks, but we need to stand united as a group and demand some respect and dignity for all the hours of hard emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual work that is required of us. And YES they do expect us to be nothing short of PERFECT. Hey, we're only poor human beings doing the best we can with the best of intentions trying to do a good job and make a living at it, and how many times is it thrown in our face about, "you could be wriitten up for this", You could lose your job for this, or my special favorite "This could MEAN your license". Running us and running us to the ground like scared little rabbits. Again, where's our respect? where's our dignity....

Healer 27, God bless you for listening to that voice in your gut that's giving you the best advice ever. I wished I'd listened to mine. Here I am 30 yrs later and trying to get disability for my poor broken down arthritic body and burnt out spirit. Nursing is slave labor with a little better salary thrown at us to keep us from bailing in the droves more of us wish that we could. In my 30 yrs. I've done every kind of nursing there is, and in each and every field, its always the same too much work, chaos, pressure, disrespect, insults, threats of being written up, loss of license, loss of job, etc. Like we're supposed to be perfect llittle robots who have no needs or feelings of our own. Trying to please patients, families, nursing supervisors, doctors, pharmacy auditors. We're the bottom of the heap. Not only that, but in so many jobs my fellow nurses were the worst offenders against one another. Talk about not sticking together to help each other. No wonder we all feel so paranoid, exhausted, unappreciated, stressed out, etc. I really hope I get my disability so I can finally do something really rewarding with my time like volunteering, or art, or just about anything else. Good luck in your decision and also with your new coming baby! btw, the manager at my bank confided to me that she left nursing after 2 yrs as a BSN and went to work at the bank at a fraction of the money and couldn't be happier. You're making the right decision!! You GO girl..... Twilite

It takes longer to go from sitting to standing and even longer to stand up straight You can't run down those corridors anymore You can only limp slowly down those corridors Your thumbs ache constantly trying to punch those pills out of those cards:uhoh3: The light never seems bright enough when you're trying to chart You have trouble using your hands You have no discernable strength in your wrists Your shift just started 20 minutes ago, and your normal aches and pains have already started in, When you can't seem to concentrate on the 13 things at one time like you used to. When the noise level in the nursing home gives you an almost irrestiable urge to smash the call light system.:angryfire

As an LPN who's now 60 and been doing mostly longterm care for most of the last 30 years, I find my body wearing out. Well, my tolerance for the intense pressure and stressful, and overworked conditions wore out a long time ago.However, I perservered, having developed a taste for shelter, food, electricty and all those other pesky little necessities of life:nono: Isn't it amazing how programmed we become to keep pushing ourselves with a back full of spinal stenosis, scoliosis, bulging disks, arthrtic feet, and now degenerative joint disease of the hands and wrists, and yet, doggedly I continued to care for others. (ironically, probably in better shape than I'm in).lol When my doctor said I couldn't use my right hand and put it in a splint, I thought Hmm, how can I continue faking an able bodied person??duh! and then all of a sudden bling a lightbulb moment... could it be, that my turn had come to take care of myself... Whan an odd idea...:smackingf so now, with one working foot, a wrecked back, and 2 trashed wrists I'm going to try for disability......wish me luck folks. Its been a long painful 30 yrs.:balloons: thanks..Twilite

Ugh, no .. I feel working in nursing is equal to being in an abusive relationship. Been in nursing 28 years and am training to go into office work now. I haven't been this excited since I don't know when.

I can tell you that I worked Baylor shift as an LPN for 7 yrs in a ltc. There were quite a few cna's who also did the baylor. It is very tough, the 16 hours would be even more so. It will leave you no "you" time at all, if you have school all week, full time. Good luck! Its do-able, but it will be tough.

I thought it was great. Matter of fact, after being in nursing over 25 yrs, I could relate to it almost entirely, if not entirely. Its funny, and it has more than one grain of truth in it. Don't let a little joke upset you, lighten up, you'll need humor to get you through!!

Don't we nurses get enough punishment just by working as nurses. Where else can you work and get so little thanks, & respect?? Nurses are expected to be perfect little people, like machines. We embrace humanity in our patients, but tolerate NON within our ranks. 99 good deeds, and jobs well done are very quickly wiped out by 1 "you messed up". We need to extend compassion and humanity to our fellow nurses. So many are already leaving the field in droves.

I'm sorry to tell you this, but after being a nurse for 20+ years, I've seen it all. Especially the inconsideration towards nurses, lack of respect, guilt trips placed upon us, and all the rest of the garbage that goes with it. Most of the jobs I have left have been because of either bullying type management, unfairness on the jobs, politics, playing favorites. Not to mention unbelievably heavy workloads, and the constant threat hanging over you that 1.you could lose your nursing license for this or that error, infraction, or #2 possibly be sued. I've had families yell at me about their sick family member. I've been stuck for shifts for up to 17 hours at a time. Mandatory overtime, working extremely shorthanded, under unbearable conditions. As a workforce, we nurses are always taken advantage of, and between all the paperwork now, and rules and regs. with HMO's, government funded payments, etc. whats allowed and what's not allowed; I now feel I also double duty as a secretary. I feel that what I thought nursing was is not at all what nursing has turned out to be for me. I feel more and more like a sucker doing a job not many others would want to do, and have been forced to swallow my pride, soak my feet, take motrin for my aching back and keep going back in for that paycheck. I'm sorry to say, the way its become, the only rewards I'm finding in nursing these days is my paycheck, which I MORE than earn. I just need a place to vent. I think I am experiencing job burnout and I've only been working for 3.5 mnths. I am on a surgical unit, have 4-5 patients on days/evenings and 8 on nights. My shifts are varied I am working all over the place. I just did a stretch of 9 nights with one day off in between, and am now going back after 2 off to do a stretch of days. My manager is not the best and the unit has a fairly high turnover due to mainly management issues, and lack of consideration for nurses. She doesn't follow union rules, and takes advantage of us on a regular basis, ie scheduling too many in a row etc etc etc. I could go on and on. I really love my patients, and this is what keeps me going back, but after doing this long stretch of nights, with an entire month of nights coming up (20 something nights) I am seriously thinking about leaving this unit and looking for something else. I am working with other grads, some who have been out for 8 months, who are also experiencing burn out and job dissatisfaction and have rotated through an average of 4 jobs since December on different units. My manager is NOT open to discuss issues and in the past when I've gone to talk to her about some of my concerns, she has been rude, flippant, sarcastic and NON supportive. Everyone I've talked to dislikes her and many of the nurses who have stuck around for years and have seen management come and go on this unit, are sticking it out because they only have a few years until retirement. Even the old timers are telling me that our unit is awful due to management and tell me I should look for something else because I am being "used". I just feel so bummed out about the whole thing and feel like I've let myself down if I leave. But, I am so exhausted and unhappy, I think I need to consider the old timers advice. Anyone have any supportive words of advice or similar experiences?