So check this out....

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6 pts......all strict contact iso. All have either trachs, vents, or both. All are incontinent B&B. All have a huge list of meds that must be crushed and given via PEG. We are talking total care here........makes for a long day.....

Family is present frequently and requires a lot of attention.

Very very hard job.

But then speech patho comes and puts a passey muir on one of my pts and the first thing she says to me is "thank you for being such a comfort to me".

That makes it all worthwhile. Then another family, the mom and the brother of a guy my age...he is weaning off the vent but he will likely never progress beyond a GCS score of 5.....as they were leaving...it is my custom to touch people on the shoulder lightly to reassure them....well this time I did that and they wrapped their arms around me and gave me a huge hug.....

Then another....her dad is GCS 3, vent dependent.....being dc'd to home under hospice care....again...another big hug.....

Another thread says nursing is slavery...I say nursing is a labor of love. I say that many seem to have lost the caring and compassion element of nursing.

I say that if any nurse does not love what they do...it may be time for them to re-evaluate what they are doing.......

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Great story, mindlor. It's always refreshing to read something positive about the profession from time to time.

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Specializes in Clinical Research, Outpt Women's Health.

Enjoyed your post. it is not just like any other job for sure.............

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Patient and family appreciation can surely make our job fulfilling.

Your facility is getting 22K per patient per week. By forcing you to take care of 6 total care patients (slavery).

they are boosting their profit margin.

Rationally, three patients would be do-able in a sub-acute rehab. But noooo! Administration( the fat cats sitting in their office, smoking a fine cigar) have deemed little nursie will bust her tookas trying to take care of six patients.

We all know that this makes providing quality care impossible.Nursie works 13 hours with barely a bathroom break trying to provide some semblance of care.

And as long as nurses accept these conditions and get their satisfaction from EMOTIONAL rewards..

We will remain overworked and under paid.

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Specializes in Med/Surg, Academics.

I recently floated to a floor I had never been on and was pleasantly surprised to see a familiar face: a nurse who had floated to my unit one night. I breathed a sigh of relief because floating does induce some anxiety and from working with her during one shift, I knew she would be very helpful.

She is, hands down, the most highly skilled nurse I've ever seen with the soft skills of nursing. It is a skill like any other. Based on our conversation while we were charting, I can't say she absolutely loves her job, but she puts her all in it regardless. I have a feeling that patient interaction is what keeps her in it.

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Specializes in Hospital Education Coordinator.

isn't it amazing that one good deed can obliterate the bad ones? That is why a smile goes a mile.

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Specializes in Trauma, ER, ICU, CCU, PACU, GI, Cardiology, OR.

needless to say, what you have described are those moments that validate a nurses dedication, thank you for sharing your experiences....aloha~

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Life isn't always filled with skittles and rainbows. Those infrequent emotional rewards make everything else worthwhile.

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Specializes in ICU, ER, EP,.

thank you so much for saying what is in my heart. You CAN'T PAY SOMEONE TO CARE. $400/hr, you can't make caring happen. You care, and so do I, thank you for sharing. I'm afraid we are a dying breed. I hope I am proved wrong.

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Because I care, I would like safer staffing.

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I am new at this....very new...but I can already see the heartbreak coming like a train wreck and I dont think I can stop it. management just keeps piling things on us to the point that it is just insane. Eventually we wont have any time left to care and at that point they might as well just bring in robots......

This is not subacute rehab...this is highly acute long term care. These folks would be in the ICU at any normal hospital. Highly complex patients....we have raps and code blues daily.....they usually are folks that are stable in CCU or ICU at the normal hospital but still need close monitoring.

We do have our own ICU in case they go south....

It is very very challenging especially for a new grad like me. I will learn a lot. The bad part is that we nurses are so taxed for time that I see many peers taking shortcuts, especially when it comes to infection control protocols. Also I see them chart ALOT of things that they simply are not doing....

I am fearful that if I try to go by the book I wont be able to keep up once I am off of orientation and on my own........

It is sad that profit and healthcare are ever used in the same breath.....

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It is sad that profit and healthcare are ever used in the same breath.....

This.

I'm glad you got the hugs and thank yous that you did. Those things do make us feel good and remind us why we became nurses. AND, your staffing level sounds unsafe to me. Just remember, before passing judgment on other nurses who speak out, it is precisely BECAUSE they care about patients that they are so angry about the working conditions at their facility.

Nurses are not assembly line workers, yet that's how we are being treated. Nursing is about caring, not assembling machines or gadgets. Nursing is about protecting our patients from harm, and when we stand by and say nothing about unsafe staffing levels, then we are complicit in putting our patients at risk.

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