beli1025

Hello all, I've only been a nurse for 6 months and I'm already having issues. For six years before I went to nursing school, I was a licensed massage therapist, working for a chiropractor's practice. It was very rewarding, and I enjoyed it greatly, but I wanted something more challenging, so I decided to become a nurse. My first semester into nursing school, all hell broke loose in my family/personal life, and I subsequently developed anxiety (sometimes crippling) and depression. I was able to move past the depression and most of the anxiety through a lot of hard work, although the last three years have been the most heartbreaking and awful I've experienced in my 34 years of life. It's been one terrible situation after another, including several family deaths. I passed my state board exam last December and got a job as a staff nurse for a hospital Med/Surg floor in January. Two months into it, I hated it so much, I was questioning why I'd become a nurse at all, and doubted everything I worked 5 years to achieve. My anxiety was back in full force, depression was creeping in, and I couldn't fathom going to work on that floor for one more shift. I spoke honestly with my supervisor and director and they generously helped me find a position on another unit at my hospital. I have been very successful on my new unit for four months now...have gotten wonderful feedback from patients, my coworkers, and my supervisor. If there was ever a unit I was meant for in a hospital setting, it's this one. The problem is, I'm still not feeling much joy from it. It's just like every other unit...understaffed, underpaid, overworked, caught in corporate red tape... The pace and the pressure are terribly hard for me to deal with!!! The anxiety is making every shift so difficult and all I do on my days off is try to recover, mostly mentally and emotionally. My husband deserves much more than that, and I know I do too...I just don't know what to do about it because I don't have much experience. I feel like I haven't been able to really come up for air for so long, and now this job is an animal all its own. I love helping people, I really do. How else can I do that as a nurse outside of the hospital/bedside setting? Any advice would be much appreciated.