RN's are getting burnt out why?

Nurses General Nursing

Published

I have 12 days a year vacation time allowed to me, this includes my sick time, sick child days in fact days off for any reason you can give.

12 whole days and I only earn these 12 days if I work 36 hours a week every week of the year. So if I am sick or have a day off I dont earn 12 days.

So can anybody tell me why we get burnt out, we cant be sick unless it is on our days off. we work week in and week out with heavy workloads petrified in case we catch something because then we wont have any hours left. God forbid you get cancelled or you family has a crisis because you wont get paid for being off if you use those 12 days which again you can only have if you have worked 36 hours every week of the year.

So now tell me why nurses get burnt out, maybe we should rally for better working conditions, which include good quality time off not vacation and sick clumped together.

Specializes in Med/Surg/Ortho/HH/Radiology-Now Retired.

Goodness Kay, that's shocking!

Before I retired,- late 2002 - I had wound down to working 2 permanent days a week over a 7 day rotating roster, and would do extra shifts over and above those days if required, or I myself sought extra days. I was under NO obligation to work more than my rostered two days. I had 12 paid days holiday a year! Plus paid sick days, can't quite remember exactly how many paid sick days now. We were paid penalty rates for working late shifts - (3-11pm) - weekends, and night duty. If you worked a public holiday you were paid double time. Christmas and New Year depending on which shift you worked, you could end up being paid triple time. This was in the private sector. A not for profit hospital.

Things have changed here in Australia since then, but I've not heard that they've become as bad as what you are describing. Little wonder the attrition rate is as bad as it is in the nursing profession!

Specializes in Emergency Dept. Trauma. Pediatrics.
wow, can i work with you??? i only get half that for four 8's and a 4 (36 hours/week). i thought it was a little low, but now that i'm reading this thread, i'm getting jealous!!!!!

that is awesome! i've always hated that my aprrox. 12 pto days per year have to be for sick time and vacation time! i've been with the company for 7 years and that's all i get? i want what you have - i'd be able to earn up to 29 days - that's more than double what i get now!!!!! :nurse:

so i take it that it is good? when i become an rn i am going to be very persistent until i get into that hospital. it seems like all around everything they offer is good and i know when i was a patient there i was treated really well and they seemed to have a very good system. they seemed to have a really good system to prevent med errors as well that the other hospital in the next city over didn't have. my neighbors are rn's husband and wife and work there and say it's really good as well. when i get a job there if i say they referred me they also will get a 1000 dollar bonus i think it was. half after 30 days and half after my year. they didn't even know about it until i told them from reading their website. they just opened another branch that is geared towards heart, trauma, birthing center and icu about 15 mins from me and are said to be opening an oncology branch so i am hoping between all their facilities and stuff if i don't give up i will get in. from what i have been reading on these boards, it seems good in comparrison to a lot of others.

You know what I think the problem is? I think it's that, no matter how hard you work as a nurse, no matter how good the care, you always go home feeling like you forgot something, or could have done something more, or whatever.

There is never that feeling of self satisfaction that goes along with completing a job, because in nursing, no job is ever complete.

For example, if you have a patient that crashes on you and you do everything right and get the patient stable and everything's good, they're still going to remind you in the next staff meeting that "patients are saying on their surveys that they didn't get their teeth brushed."

You just can never do enough. I think that's the reason for burnout.

You know, like if you were an architect, once your building was complete, you and your crew would all go out to a bar and celebrate a job well done. That never happens in nursing.

Specializes in ED, ICU, PACU.
You know what I think the problem is? I think it's that, no matter how hard you work as a nurse, no matter how good the care, you always go home feeling like you forgot something, or could have done something more, or whatever.

There is never that feeling of self satisfaction that goes along with completing a job, because in nursing, no job is ever complete.

For example, if you have a patient that crashes on you and you do everything right and get the patient stable and everything's good, they're still going to remind you in the next staff meeting that "patients are saying on their surveys that they didn't get their teeth brushed."

You just can never do enough. I think that's the reason for burnout.

You know, like if you were an architect, once your building was complete, you and your crew would all go out to a bar and celebrate a job well done. That never happens in nursing.

Wow, I think you my have just hit the nail on the head.

Specializes in Med-Surg Tele.

We get 5 accrued hours for each paycheck, and that depends on if you work the total 72 hours a week. What a jip. And Quafetti got it right. I hear patients telling me "oh you're so good to me" and "you're my favorite nurse" but none of that reaches to the ears of the administration. All they care about are the negatives and none of the positives.

wow, here i was always told that other free countries have much better vacation benefits than america. apparently that isn't always the case. my mom is an ma and she gets more than that when she started out. now she has been doing it for 11 years and has 4 weeks in vaca and than sick days and stuff. i know from looking at different hospital websites it varies a lot around here, my local hospital seems to have excellent benefits. at least it seems so to me, not sure how it compares across the country but just from reading these boards they seem to have much lower nurse to patient ratios.

here is the pto they have, their is a lot of other things they offer but just talking about the pto itself. again, i am not sure if this is good across the board but it seemed good to me.

[color=#669966]paid time off benefits

to help maintain work/life balance and financial security, pvhs provides a flexible paid time off (pto) program. full and part-time employees earn pto each pay period throughout the year. you can use your accrued pto for vacations, holidays, and sick time. in addition, if you leave employment at pvhs, you can cash out any unused pto.

the amount of pto you earn is based on your length of service and hours worked. the annual pto accruals for a full-time employee working 80 hours per two week pay period are listed below. pto accruals for employees working less than 80 hours per pay period are prorated based on actual hours worked.

years of employment

maximum pto hours

earned per year

equivalent maximum

based on 8-hour days

year 1

184 hours

23 days

years 2-4

200 hours

25 days

years 5-10

232 hours

29 days

years 11 or more

272 hours

34 days

in the late '80's what i had as a new nurse, at a uni hospital (state) was equal to your 11 yr vet.....10 vaca days, 13 sic days, and 11 paid holidays.......

Specializes in Management, Emergency, Psych, Med Surg.

I have been a nurse for a long time. I like my job a lot. My problem is that I get frustrated with small stuff that seems to occur every day and never get fixed. It takes the pharmacy 4 hours to get a patients meds in the Pyxis. I have patients coming up when the bed is not ready. Supervisor calls me to get a bed and does not know what is wrong with the patient. It goes on and on. It is small stuff but when you deal with it every day, it gets old.

Specializes in pcu/stepdown/telemetry.

As far as the benefits I think you are working in the wrong place. I work 36 hours and get 12 days plus 6 days sick, plus holiday accrual, personal too. And yes customer service has become more important than anything they would rather us get a difficult pt his stupid request like a box of tissues asap because he's difficult than to get a respectful sweet pt his morphine on time.. crazy

Seems like we need a union or an ANA that has some teeth. I never did like the idea of unions until I'd been a nurse and been taken advantage of for a couple of years. I'd rather an ANA that had teeth.

However, seems too many nurses are anti union or have the "When I was a young nurse the Dr's used to beat us with metal bedpans and we used to scrub the floors too!" kinda mentality.

BTW, when I lived in "other countries" (UK) I got 5 weeks paid leave, also unlimited sick pay so long as there was a medical reason as well as all national holidays. This was the norm, pretty standard vacation leave.

Where I work now in the USA I get about 8 hours PTO per paycheck but that is for all holidays, sick leave and vacation.

Specializes in NICU, PICU, PCVICU and peds oncology.

in most parts of Canada we have fairly generous provisions for vacations, sick time, statutory holidays and personal leave. After 6 1/2 years in this job, I have 20 vacation days (8 hours/ day in a 12 hour environment, so actually 15 days prorated by FTE), accrue 2 hours of sick time per week (have the equivalent of 12 1/2 weeks saved in my sick bank), 12 statutory holidays/year and 4 personal leave days/year... The issue is actually getting the time off approved! Vacations are scheduled by May 1 of each year and we have to request 90% of our annual entitlement, which is approved based on seniority. Sick time is sometmes subject to interpretation as are the personal leave days (for pressing necessity). If the manager doesn't believe you're really sick, or if your "pressing necessity" isn't considered pressing enough, you don't get paid for the day off. And getting time back for stats is impossible.

Things that burn my coworkers and me out are things like heavy assignments shift after shift, emphasis on errors and not on the 100s of hours of error-free work that go between, unrealistic families, unrealistic physicians, runs of deaths, continuous change with no real rationale, management so out of touch with the realities of the unit that they couldn't work a 4 hour block at the bedside in an emergency... and so it goes. I compiled an "attrition list" of all the nurses I could think of who have quit my unit since I started there and the list now stands at 104... and there are also quite a few CNAs and RTs who have left that I didn't count. It's really an eye-opener!

Nursing is one of the only professions where other people (family members, patients, physicians, physical therapists, dietitians, vendors, managers, visitors, administrators, etc.) can stroll into your workplace and openly disrespect the nurse while getting away with it. I wouldn't dare to come to someone's place of employment and start mistreating him/her, but many people never think twice about doing it to nurses.

Disrespect equals crispy burnout.

Pretty much all customer service jobs are like this.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you comedic relief:

http://notalwaysright.com/

I have the same hope...with more men coming into the field, I think benefits will start getting better.

We also "get called off when not busy" (read: when there would be "only" 5 or so patients a nurse with every nurse there) and we have to take our vacation time to cover. So basically, we finance their whims. It sucks.

Don't count on men making things better. Men leave bedside nursing faster then female nurses do. They congretate in specialties like CRNA, where they can build independant practices, and where they will make far more money, and be more autononmous than female nurses who stay in bedside nursing. JMHO and my NY $0.02.

Lindarn, RN, BSN, CCRN

Spokane, Washington

+ Add a Comment