Too busy to care (for one another)?

[Emergent, RN]

I recently accepted a position at my Per Diem job and resigned my position at my former job, where I'll be staying Per Diem.

My new job is in a tiny, lovely level 5 ER in a tourist town. The culture there is much more laid back. The clientele is decidedly middle class and the pace slower. My co-workers work there because they like the culture, I'm taking a significant pay cut, but I'll still be picking up shifts at my former job to pad my income, since I will only be working 2 12 hr shifts

week at the new one.

My old job is a corporate owned hospital that squeezes as much as they can per worker bee as possible, and the patient population has a lot of challenging social problems that drain ones compassion reserve to near empty. It often feels like an assembly line, and like in the the famous 'I Love Lucy' episode, they keep cranking up the pace, making it more and more difficult to keep up.

One cool thing that really warms my heart is that, because of me, the new place instituted a new policy of sending Get Well cards to people out with illnesses. I had a serious accident last winter requiring emergency surgery and was on FMLA for almost 3 months from my old job. Someone called me from my new job, where I was an occasional worker, 1 or 2 shifts a month. She was checking on how I was doing, said that they were thinking of sending a card, but didn't get around to it. I told her 'that's okay, my main job didn't send me a card either'.

Well, this one LPN there told me the other day that he brought that up in a meeting and said 'see, she doesn't work there anymore', and he showed me a couple of get well cards that were sealed and ready to send out.

I like my new job, and hope to stay there until retirement. They aren't too busy to care.

[Rose_Queen, BSN, MSN, RN]

I don't think it's so much "too busy" as it is the workplace culture. My department has always been busy with sending cards/flowers and taking up collections when true tragedies happen. Other departments not so much.