soybeck

I tried acute care for a few weeks over ten years ago. Like you I thought it would be so wonderful. I hated everyday. I missed the relationship I have with my Residents and their families. I did however learn a lot, so I don't discount that experience, but I am pretty sure that acute care nursing is not for me. Don't waste any more time being unhappy. Life is too short for that. :)

Hello all, I think this may just be me venting, and not so much a question. I have been a nurse 15 years next month. All my nursing experience has been in long term care. (except for a foray into acute care/med-surg that ended after a few weeks) Recently, most days my 25 minute drive home from work is spent in tears, and sometimes the drive TO work includes tears. I am frustrated all the way around. We are in the midst of a managerial upheaval at work and the new young administrator and DON each have less than 2 years nursing experience. I personally have a hard time being told what to do by someone who has never actually shown that they can DO my job...the company for which I work sees only their degrees (BSN) and apparently that excuses not having actual on-the-job experience. I am sure things will work out "in the end." But I sure do not want to be the teething ring these girls cut their careers on. How do you know when it is time to move on? I have been at this job over 5 years now and my pay scale is really decent, high enough that I would likely have to take a large cut in pay (which I might not be able to afford) should I go to another job and start over again. Is there anything out there for an old LPN other than LTC? I feel like I am at the end of my tries with LTC - pills all day, family members taking their stress out on me, CNA drama, etc. But would anything else pay me what I need to make to support my family? I live in a rural area and the cities with large hospitals are 30+ miles away, farther than I want to drive every single day. Will this get better? I hope it is just a passing fancy, has anyone else ever had this conversation with themselves? I feel pretty alone. Thanks for bearing with me.

I worked the night shift as a new grad, and in hindsight I think it was a great shift to increase my confidence. On the whole 3rd shift is MUCH quieter, with nowhere near as many meds. Please do not take the "advice" of your coworker who tells you to combine your med passes. Stick to the RIGHT way to do things, the way you learned in school. It is very easy to fall into bad habits. Good luck to you :)

PointClickCare is very user friendly. The best way to learn is get in and explore it. If you have time, on your gold bar on the left side at the bottom is a link called "Resource Center" there you will find some help to navigate some areas. Unfortunately, I am unsure about accessing PCC outside of our dedicated network (like at home I mean) so any exploration would have to be done at work.

I feel you on this. Unfortunately, every choice in long term care comes down to "who is going to pay for this?" In Illinois the State pays so slowly for the Medicaid patients that if it were not for our self/private pay people we would be going under. Our administration only looks at the numbers required by law for staffing and THAT is what we have to work with - never mind the acuity of the care we have to give, if the state says one nurse can care for 50 people, well then one nurse is all they are allowed to staff. I do not know how to affect change in an industry so driven by profit. In my company, many people in upper management are not educated in health care fields but in business, so they really have no real concept of what the actual day to day work is like. All they see are numbers on paper (or on their computer screen I guess). Secondly, I see also a shift in our culture in how the elders are viewed. Many of the young people who come in as CNAs or food service staff have no respect even for their own peers, let alone their supervisors, parents or grandparents. With the "progress" of society we see the degradation of family values, including respect for our elders. With that being said, all I have to decide is what to do with the time that has been given to me, and that includes giving the best care I possibly can, and being a voice for my people when I have to be.

The unit I work has up to 45 Residents when full, and only one nurse - the nurse does it all meds, treatments, charting phone calls orders incidents "excellent" customer service etc. We have the two hour window in Illinois for med passes (one hour before the scheduled time and one hour after). We have a widely varied population on my unit - from young rehab short stay to tricky sub acute people to time-consuming multiple comorbidity people to wild and wooly dementia people {that we have to keep away from the others without restraining them}. And most of my people take 8+ meds, some as many as 15 in addition to supplements. I do not have the time to spend 10 minutes with each one to ensure all 15 pills and special protein drinks and the required amount of water all goes down - but I must do it anyway. Patient care suffers severely in many ways in the LTC setting and nurses who are everything-to-everyone on their units cannot safely spend 80% of their shifts passing meds and then be expected to give superb HILTON QUALITY CARE that has become the expectation of our newly aging population. I am sorry for the rant. What we have had to do at my facility is schedule some meds at 0700, some at 0800, some at 0900 to stagger the pass times so that no one's meds are "late." We also work 12 hour shifts so we have two "big" passes a day (0800 & 2000) with the obligatory noon and 1600 some midnights and then another pass at 0500. I feel jaded about my life revolving around pills, and I wonder just how much does this actually improve anyone's quality of life at 95 years of age? Really.