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?
