This is not what I thought my nursing career would be like after passing the NCLEX. I've never met so many different personalities, it's insane. Sometimes I think, "maybe if I would have gotten pregnant at 17, I'd have 4 kids living on welfare in my section 8 house eating steaks with my food stamp card living it up right now". But no. I haaad to go to college to be a nurse. I could have been a stripper, a drug dealer, or anything else for that matter. I hope my 26k in debt is worth it.
NursesAnnouncementsArchiveArticle
I've been an LPN in New Orleans now for about a year and a half. I started out just OK with my career choice. Since I'm an LPN, the choices of work that I have are basically nursing home, clinic, doctors office, or if I get lucky, a hospital once I get some experience.
I ended up in a nursing home. I'm not going to lie, I've NEVER wanted to work in a nursing home. I almost quit nursing school in the middle of clinical because I had to go to a nursing home. That setting is just not for me. Well, after I graduated nursing school, hardly any place decent was hiring a new LPN with no experience. So, what did I do? I sucked up my pride, and applied at the closest nursing home that I could find. It was that, or make $14 an hour at a clinic. Besides, working at this particular nursing home saved me a lot of gas money. The pay was actually a lot better than what my other classmates were being paid. Most of my classmates did go to clinics, not for the money, but for the great hours.
Anyways, to get to my rant, the nursing home wasn't so bad. I actually was OK with it. The problems came with the employees. I worked with nothing but ratchet nurses that talk behind your back and CNAs that did half *** work due to their c/o "we gettin paid minimum wage so this place gunna get minimum wage work". The attitudes were horrible.
The CNA turn around rate was also horrible. Always working under staffed and under paid. My relief even started making a habit of calling in at the last minute, leaving me there till a new relief could come. Nobody has any body's back in nursing. I became friends with a CNA and we became kind of close. We were close until she stole something from me and lied about it. I get stolen from a lot on my unit. I guess that's normal, right? On top of that aggravation, The family of the residents are always complaining because their loved ones ADLs are hardly ever completed due to the staff's attitude and under staffment. It's just so much stress being a nurse.
After a year and a half, I feel like it's not necessarily the work load that makes me hate my job, it's the stress of managing my unit and accepting the things that I can't control. I've changed as a person; I think I've even lost hope for the human race like it's gotten that bad. I've never met so many rude, catty, backstabbing, selfish people in my life. I don't know if it's because nurses are all stressed out or if it's me. I don't even know how some of the nurses that I work with even passed high school, much less have a nursing license. One nurse that I work with had to write an incident about a resident that fell on the floor. She literally documented "res found on flow."
I just can't deal. I don't know whether to forward my career and become an RN, or work in a cemetery where there's no complaining. Did I mention that one of my older nursing co workers tried getting me to over dose my hospice patient. Oh his respirators are 9? Give him morphine he's going to die anyway. The saying that "nurses eat their young" is so accurate. Do you know what that makes nurses? Cannibals. Oh you passed your NCLEX? Congrats. Next step? Try not to cry too loud while your co workers eat you alive for their own amusement.
