The two worst places to be a nurse

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I have been a nurse for many, many years and was a travel nurse before meeting my husband. Both of us have toured around the country a bit before settling in my home state of NC. I would have to say the two worst places to be a nurse, in the places I have been are:

Any US VA hospital. Obviously they have their problems from what's in the news but it's not that. They breed a sense of entitlement and have made good nurses, friends, lazy nurses. If you have to work, and show up but census changes you can't call staff off so often times I have just been told to staff in house and sit. What did I do? I tried to find things to do or work in a different department, but often times was not able to. One time I worked as a secretary because I didn't like being complacent. Other friends they just sat on the unit or in break rooms playing on their phones. They get used to this so when a better position came along for a friend of mine he took it. Within 4 months he was let go because his attitude was still stuck in the VA mentality.

Canada. Unions! I hate em, unions were good once, the concept was sound but unions and the theory has been perverted so badly that it too breeds laziness and a huge sense of entitlement. I have friends that want to stone me because they have bought into the union way but "please God, abolish unions"!

Sorry all my union brothers and sisters but that's my opinion and unlike the union doctrine I still have my opinion to fall back on.

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Between per diem and full time positions I have only worked at 4 hospitals. The worst for me was a small Catholic Hospital. They did not value nursing education, did not bother looking for up to date info, leadership was terrible, and their was this feeling that nurses were unimportant and that you should bow down to MDs. I only lasted 4 months.. left when my lead nurses started to lecture me about living in sin...

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Specializes in Nephrology, Dialysis, Plasmapheresis.

For me, I have worked as a travel nurse and a contractor just over 5 years. But, I have been present in 6 states and over 30 hospitals. The worst experiences for me occurred in Long Term Acute Care Hospitals... aka.. LTACHs. You know the big names: Kindred and Select. I'm not saying that the staff was bad there, but the conditions were awful. I don't ever want to be a patient there or a staff nurse. The nurses have 6-8 total lifts, half or more on isolation, incontinent, amputations, confused, trached, screamer/moaner types. It is just so sad to be there and the nurses have way more work then they can possibly do. I've noticed there are a few nurses there that really care and really try, they don't last long. The ones that seem to stay a long time tend to become careless and sluggish. A call light could take over an hour to get answered.

Suppose that has nothing to do with unions. I did work at a union hospital in southern California. Many nurses that I asked about it said that they are frustrated because there are lots of people that shouldn't be there, who deserve to be fired, but never will be. They were making $55/hr to start, and it was posted in the break room based on years experience. That was kinda strange. Guess everyone gets paid the same amount based on experience. I can see pluses and minuses to unions. If I were going to work for a union hospital, I would just make sure I didn't need a "team" environment to survive.

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Unions! I hate em, unions were good once, the concept was sound but unions and the theory has been perverted so badly that it too breeds laziness and a huge sense of entitlement.

If you can't beat them, join them! Getting paid more to do less. Win/win

Worst possible nursing jobs are ones where you can't delegate away wiping butts and answering call lights.

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Specializes in HH, Peds, Rehab, Clinical.

Sorry, it was up to your friend to "lose the VA mentality", he lost that job on his own....

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Specializes in Critical care, tele, Medical-Surgical.
For me, I have worked as a travel nurse and a contractor just over 5 years. But, I have been present in 6 states and over 30 hospitals. The worst experiences for me occurred in Long Term Acute Care Hospitals... aka.. LTACHs. You know the big names: Kindred and Select. I'm not saying that the staff was bad there, but the conditions were awful. I don't ever want to be a patient there or a staff nurse. The nurses have 6-8 total lifts, half or more on isolation, incontinent, amputations, confused, trached, screamer/moaner types. It is just so sad to be there and the nurses have way more work then they can possibly do. I've noticed there are a few nurses there that really care and really try, they don't last long. The ones that seem to stay a long time tend to become careless and sluggish. A call light could take over an hour to get answered.

Suppose that has nothing to do with unions. I did work at a union hospital in southern California. Many nurses that I asked about it said that they are frustrated because there are lots of people that shouldn't be there, who deserve to be fired, but never will be. They were making $55/hr to start, and it was posted in the break room based on years experience. That was kinda strange. Guess everyone gets paid the same amount based on experience. I can see pluses and minuses to unions. If I were going to work for a union hospital, I would just make sure I didn't need a "team" environment to survive.

At many fine California hospitals nurses have a union contract. I think the non union hospitals probably staff appropriately and respect their nurses.

At seven of the top ten nurses are unionized:

Best Hospitals in California - US News Best Hospitals

If employees are lazy, incompetent, unreliable, or "need to be fired' for any reason management can terminate them.

"Just Cause" discipline is standard in contracts with a formal process for termination and other discipline.

Incompetent managers and administrators sometimes don't document problems. Sometimes they use the union as an excuse for not doing their jobs. As a registry nurse I reported to the nurse manager and filled out an incident report when an employee went into the room of a patient in contact isolation without hand-washing, gloves, or gown. Then left and went into the room of a burn patient on reverse isolation. That manager told me, "I can't do anything about her or she will run crying to the union."

At my hospital some of us have worked together 10, 20, and 30+ years. After I'd worked there 16 years we were purchased by a for profit company. After a few months they had treated our fine nurse manager and other excellent nurses so badly they left to work elsewhere. Then they laid of 1/3 of the RNs and replaced them with people from housekeeping and dietary. 50% of our pharmacists and pharmacy techs were replaced with "runners".

As we had warned them med errors increased. Most were late medications.

If there was a sick call if was common for one RN to be responsible for up to 30 patients on a medical-surgical unit.

My friend on another unit called be for a get together at the Red Cross. She and others had called a rep from the union.

We ended up winning an election and then a contract. We worked with thousands of fellow nurses, both with and without a union, and won the safe staffing ratio law. Without our union it wouldn't have happened. That law has saved lives.

Implications of the California Nurse Staffing Mandate for Other States

Teamwork and helping each other was our culture before and after we unionized. We didn't let that corporation take away our nurse's values.

We truly are almost always able to provide safe, effective, therapeutic nursing care with competence and compassion to our patients. It is such a blessing to know we together have helped our patients and our work lives.

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If you can't beat them, join them! Getting paid more to do less. Win/win

Worst possible nursing jobs are ones where you can't delegate away wiping butts and answering call lights.

And they "brought us the weekends". ;)

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Completely unrelated, but from your title I thought they made another episode of this and got excited. Catch this episode if you can find it somewhere.

BBC Two - Toughest Place to be a..., Series 3, Nurse

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Any SNF, any maximum security mental health institution

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