nichefinder

hugs... I feel for you as I see abuses in daily situations but people expect nurses "just to take it." Physical or verbal abuse has not happened to me (surprisingly) but if it does, I am ready to debunk and confront the person (as long as it's not my superior like physician or manager, etc). Can you imagine if a teacher or engineer or anyone with 4 year degree gets treated like this by clients daily? I have no exact idea how the notion of nurse=slave came about, but the traditional old school view of nursing from our colleagues does not help much either. There are other areas of nursing where we don't have to be bruised up physically and mentally as often, and I am on my mission to find it for my happiness. You do whatever it takes to do what makes you happy, don't heed a word to negative bashers. Expecting respect from your workplace (or anywhere for that matter) is everyone's right.

I take every advices with grains of salt, and I thank all those who encourage me. To answer some posts previously, I applied to FNP program already, awaiting the answer. Even if I don't get in, I know for sure I will get my FNP in the future as higher autonomy and greater scope of practice for patients will make me more versatile healthcare provider. I am very into health, nutrition and exercises, going to gym at least 3 times a week and more if I can. And as many said, I used to believe that I can do anything for money, but I will gladly take a pay cut to go where I can restore some health and be somewhat happy to go to work. I am very militaristic person in nature and training; it's tough for me to see lack of any forms of discipline or decency even in tough times; there are sick people who retain their grace and discipline while some act in the opposite way, and my clientele seems to be the latter type, that's all. To answer jadelpn, I believe that my health problems are derived not by this specific population but by the nature of work. MS is a hard place no matter who the population is, and I believe my personality (as mentioned above) dos not bode well in environments that frequently interact with sick, mad people. My appreciation to those who understand that just because the term "ghetto" is used, that does not involve any colors. Since I won't address on this further, please refer to my previous post on this. I agree that the socioeconomic status of clientele doesn't affect the behaviors and attitudes of patients. I have personally seen well-to-dos act inappropriately while the indigent clients act with decency, but just it happens that current clientele does not. Ended up applying 5-6 places, and rethought my decision to quit since being jobless is no good.

my clientele range in race of all origins. again, klone, look at how you make assumption. you're reinforcing your own reinforcement. sigh... no one talked about race when i use the term ghetto. it was used in describing very uncanny behaviors and why are you interpreting it as being used against certain race? again, you are reinforcing your own reinforcement. i am tired of defending my use of word. if you are going to take offense on that, do it by all means. I am here to share sad times with fellow nurses and encourage each other and it seems that some people completely missed the point because of their own hard-wired beliefs. It's like someone believing the word "fruit" refers to only oranges. Why you keep coming back accusing me of being color-biased when none of that is mentioned, I don't know, and certainly the use of the word "ghetto" has been explained throughly. Perhaps class of logistics might help in the rhetoric understanding and context comprehension. i will not address this issue anymore.

@NanikRNl isten, i do appreciate people who come in to listen to my rant and give me advices, but i am a very stand-firm type of character, and if something is on my mind, I WILL SAY IT in the least offensive way possible. I give seniority respect to RNs with experience, but that doesn't stop me from telling them why they have to say somethings they say to me as long as they are staff RNs like me (of course, I say it politely, and this happened in my work places where I stand ground and confront when I am met with unnecessary impoliteness; guess what, I gained respect from everyone on my unit because of that). Again, I am not sure of your work background or Rubys's but quickly judging me for terming the patients "ghetto" EVEN AFTER I apologized in my comment for misusing the term "ghetto"... I mean do you even read the whole post? Again, someone in earlier post has termed the word "ghetto" in perfect description for audiences such as yourselves, so I advise that you go read that please. I don't dislike their behavior because they are "ghetto." It's because they do things that normal people would not do, as mgngal explained, stealing narcotics from waste bins, lying to doctors for pain meds when all labs show normal, hitting staff, yelling, grabbing the doc by the headlock, etc. Seriously, please refrain from being overly judgmental before even throughley reading all the posts and without sufficient knowledge of the situation. Sincerely in regard to your harsh, but not-well processed opinion

@ruby: thanks for the advice. i actually applied to couple spots but i'm not a kid, so quitting before a secured job is a bad idea,so i'm trooping on for 3 more months unless i find a job of course. but if you have no idea what i meant about the "ghetto clientele", considering the fact that you probably have a decade or two of experience, i am purely surprised to note that you seem to not have any kind of agreement or empathy (not that I need it :)) about working with "difficult" population. Like kalevra said, let's face it, we have all been there and worked with those types if you ever had to work in med surg. Or maybe you worked only in cushy environment with easy, outpatient only patients in rich neighborhood? That I don't know. But if you haven't worked in the so called "ghetto are hospitals", I think it might be too early for you to decide for me whether my opinion stink or not. and amolucia, i would never mention about how stressful the current job is as anything negative about work during interview would cause bad looks.

from wat i understand in my facility, pcts can draw labs... other than that, same cleaning butts haha good luck

@kalevra: thanks for the support, and I guess I wrongly used the term ghetto patients as that could interject some misunderstanding... but please refer to what kalevra has termed the "ghetto clientele"... I do not have any job lined up, but so far have about 9 months RN experience. I know I might be pretty new, but I can feel my body and mind breaking down. Again, no offense to anyone by the term ghetto clientele. But again, Kalevra termed it perfectly for your referal. The hospital is located at... where guns go off and police choppers can be heard not too uncommonly...

Hello all... It's been little over 3 months since I started this medsurg job... very busy floor with 6 max load, no phlebotomy team, very slow system, horrendous meditech charting, very ghetto clientele, your regular run-around-crazy-head-cut-off MS floor... I was going to soldier on 3 more months so I can internal transfer, but last night's shift sealed the deal for me. After finding out I had 2 fresh admissions beginning of my shift, then running around for 5-6 hrs straight working around the crappy, slow system, having to deal with all the non-compliant, demanding, complaining, ghetto pts, smiling at them even when I wanted to strangle them, and finally when the pt pulled out the IV, my sanity snapped, cartwheeled, double back flipped and my nose started bleeding with a migraine..... After I started this job, my bp would skyrocket sometimes to 170/94 when my baseline used to be 120-130/80s. I would suffer from insomnia, not even getting 3 hrs sleep between shifts, dragging my feet to work, hating my life because I hate my job, and demanding, complaining pts just slowly chew me inside out while I have to calmly smile and explain to them because stupid healthcare industry turned RNs into damn hotel servants. My father has HTN, grandma died of hemorrhagic stroke, and when that nose started bleeding, I immediately thought "I have got to get out of here." I am most likely present my 2 weeks notice early this week; I have no job lined yet, but for the health and sanity, I feel like I must quit. Good grief, I didn't hate nursing school this bad! I am willing to take pay cut to go to somewhere I can work with little more relaxation; fixing my resume and starting to look today at OR, cath, GI, day surg, endo, etc. "Nursing" Webster Dictionary definition: saving others while trying not to take your own. Amen to that. I am done, I want to live.

i am currently seeking hospital jobs (partially unfortunately) because of the dollars... some of you have listed out-of-hospital jobs like public health, prevention, etc. I wouldn't mind doing them except the pay is considerably low and plus seeing so many frequent fliers, I came to believe that primary prevention doesn't work in this country because of apathy and ignorance. anyways, I am also torn heavily between cath lab and preop/pacu/OR gig.

CWONgal is exactly right. The ability to do something different in nursing is a great plus. But the biggest sadness I feel in nursing (and healthcare in general in USA) is that all the glitter and happy things you expect in nursing school is impossible to spot in real world. The system is very nonfunctional; I just don't know why. Maybe the general public is entitled to privileges that they believe are rights at the cost of other people's money. But then again, I am not originally from here, so I can't understand that mentality, but in most of countries, people have general concept that one must pay consequences for deliberately ill, unhealthy decisions... plus the debauchery of CMS and impossible expectations from credentialing makes us even more bitter and unappreciated

versatility... if you don't like what you do, you can do something totally different :)

@RNperdiem: It's my second medsurg job and I guarantee it on my death bed it will be the last one also; just got to fill in 6 months as courtesy and to do internal transfer. I am used to the job and can adapt pretty quick (used 2 weeks orientation in this completely new hospital system). You are right though, good jobs come hard, but I am proactive about it; went to observe a cath lab procedure at my hospital since I knew a lady who works there; got to meet the team and the doc; LOVED it. They all seemed to enjoy what they were doing. Hopefully I can find a day to observe GI lab or day surgery. @keepitreal: I consider myself pretty fast learner. But you're right, the phrase "you have to pay your dues" comes very true especially in nursing, and especially to the new grads. I know I will be working only 6 months here until I am actively searching to run away, but still, I don't want to hate my life because of my job :) @GrnTea: Thank you for that advice! I very much agree with that idea. Sometimes I want to go into a venue that is completely different; for example, quality/risk management, research nursing, case management, corporate, etc etc; maybe after few more years in clinical setting, I will be able to find a cool office job like you :)

@Houtx: my exact thoughts. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy interacting with people outside the job and won't mind lending a hand as a good samaritan, but it's somehow different in hospital setting with patients... It's not that I don't like people, I love people! I just don't get any good feeling interacting with patients, whether they are nice to me or not (always put up a smile though). I admire educators, since teaching is not something I can do easily haha. Thank you for the support!

RNperdiem and notdoneyet right on the dot.