acuriousnurse

Don't take it personally. He was probably uncomfortable with the situation and took it out on you. I've noticed that paramedics (or was he and EMT?) tend to get really jumpy if they aren't familiar with hospice patients. You did nothing wrong.

So I'll keep it short... I did about 2.5 years on a Med/onc floor, then 1.5 years in home hospice and got burnt out. I decided to move to another city and figured I would just take a hospital job to keep my skills up and perhaps as a less emotionally taxing job than hospice. So long story short I'm now doing ortho and feel like a complete idiot. I talked about my past patients with my new coworkers and felt very confident going into the job. Now I feel liked I've talked myself up too much. I'm afraid that everyone is wondering why I'm having such a hard time transitioning and get anxious when things go wrong. Has anyone else had a similar experience? I feel like I should be able to hold it together with the amount of experience I have by now.

I am looking for what is available right now. I want to get the experience of living somewhere else, so I think this is coming at the perfect time. It will be 1 year in May, which gives me enough time to find another job.

I have been a nurse for almost 4 years now. I started on a medical-oncology floor which i hated and transitioned to home hospice about 8 months ago to follow my nursing dream. It all started out great. There were bad cases, of course, but I enjoyed taking time with patients and getting to know them. Over the past few months my caseload has changed a lot, and with all the payment changes my company seems to be freaking out about cost. I lost 15 patients between the beginning of December to the middle of January. I took on a pediatric case with the promise that they would try to keep my caseload down and not bombard me with admissions. Well that went by the wayside and i ended up with 14 patients, two with pleurex drains and one that ended-up having a psychotic episode (which his daughters refused to take him to the ED for). I know that my company is really struggling to keep it's head above water, so we are cutting back on everything... and guess who gets to talk to patients about it? There are multiple patients that we have explain why we are no longer providing supplies and what that means for them. So pretty much I've gotten to this point where I have stopped caring about my job and what I'm doing. It's hard to admit, but often I see a call coming from my office and all I can think is "what now?" People want me to fix there problems and I just can't. I can help with pain, but if your father is trying to cut you with a knife you need to call the police, I'm sorry if that is too blunt. I wonder if I was meant for this part of nursing, or even nursing at all. I love being there for patients and families when there is a symptom I can control. I feel blessed for all the tender moments I've seen and experienced. I feel so lucky that those people let me into their lives and I was able to help them have a good death. On the other hand I hate having to deal with all the paperwork, changes in what we provide, families wanting the benefits of hospice while still getting curative treatment (and constantly arguing their case to me a person with no power to change anything). Office politics are also bringing me down as I often have issues with the staff not transferring calls the appropriate way. I am taking my first vacation this coming week, which I think will be helpful. I know that I need to take more breaks. I know that I am not going to stay at this company... but where do I go from here?