wakeuptothesun86

Hi there :) I graduated from nursing school in May and have been working as a med-surg nurse since September. I just hit my six month mark and am brinking on seven. I love being a nurse. I love my coworkers and my patients. However, I can't shake the sense that my job is unsafe and I need to get out of there. Our staffing is horrendous (which I know is like most places), but when I say horrendous, I mean that two days ago I had eleven patients on PM shift. I was "protected" for the first six months of this job cuz the newbies are only allowed six patients at a time. Now that I suddenly broke my six month mark, though, suddenly I found myself being one of two nurses for twenty-two patients. I couldn't keep track of anybody and I did not feel safe on the unit. The average runs at about eight or nine patients, but I have seen nurses at ten or eleven patients often enough in the past who were still expected to take admissions. A week or two ago, I had an admission who died (but not on my shift thankfully) and it was a patient with whom I had a good rapport. Finding out that patient didn't make it felt awful because he died of some minute thing. All I could think about when I had eleven patients is how I was praying no one else coded because I would never have known. It just feels like I'm gambling with people's lives and it's not worth it. I didn't have time to catch the little things and, as we all know, the little things can be so important. My coworkers tell me that "you have to make room for human error," which I get, but I want out. I'd been planning on handing in my two weeks notice tomorrow, but now I'm second-guessing myself. I don't have another job lined up and I pay approximately $1000 a month for my nursing loans. However, that uncertainty seems minute when compared to playing with the safety of someone's parent, grandparent, sibling, or child. Am I crazy for quitting without another job lined up? Please let me know what you think :)

Hey everyone :) So I'm a new grad nurse who's been working at a hospital for a little over two months. This will be my third week on my own after seven weeks of orientation on my med-surg unit. I'm only allowed to have six patients (haha, "only") until I hit my six month mark, but after that anything goes. By that, I mean it's not uncommon for nurses to get hit with 10-11 patients on a shift. I'm the only PM nurse since everyone else works twelves, days, or nights, so my shifts get a little crazy with admissions, discharges, and picking up patients for nurses who leave at 7 pm. Does anyone have any tips for coping with the stress of it all? I feel a little blindsided because the nurses I met in clinicals only ever had four, maybe five patients max and the crazy ratios at my hospital were never mentioned in my interview process. The turnover rates are high, the staff morale is low, and many of the patients get labeled as drug seekers. The nurses are too busy to do anything other than pass meds, do their tasks, and chart, and the patients are very keenly aware of the fact that we don't actually have time for them. Plus, I've heard multiple stories of the administration trying to find ways to fire people on my unit; even if it is for good reason, it makes me feel uncomfortable and the environment feels insecure. I feel like I'm doing more or less okay in the moment, but honest to goodness, I don't EVER want to have more than six patients. I feel like I'm barely able to keep my head above water as is, and I don't feel comfortable or safe taking care of more than my current load. Unfortunately, it's in my future unless I found another job, but I don't know if it would look bad to leave after only six months? I tell myself that I should be grateful to have a job at all and that lots of hospitals are understaffed, but the stress is overwhelming. I feel like something's gotta give. I became a nurse for the love of caring for people spiritually just as much as physically, and now I find that I'm becoming bitter, cynical, and somewhat apathetic to the patients at my job. My loved ones have noticed that I'm becoming more callous. This is not me. This is not who I ever want to be as a nurse. I just don't know how long I should wait and put up with all the crazy before it becomes a good enough reason to leave.