Unrealistic workload and write ups

[fanola]

I have been an LPN for 6 yrs, I haven't had much stability in my career. I was fired from my first nursing job within the first 6 months. Then the only work I could find was prn and nothing consistent for the first 3 yrs. Then when something full time opened up I took it.

In that year, I had 4 different DON's. And at least 1 write up from each. Some write ups were things that others considered nor worthy of a write up. With every new DON comes changes and they seem to expect you to know them prior to them getting there. They all do things differently, and for some it's just about showing staff who is the boss.

With my next job, You answered to the administrator and the owners. New management came in as well, and I did make errors, the last 2 wasn't minor, But I was exhausted (d/t insomnia)and went to work when I should have stayed home those days. The family members of more than half the unit were extremely involved and demanding. I received many phone calls from various family members and different agencies.

Some families called and came in and some stayed there all day, needing constant reassurance from this nurse. I need time to do the work expected of me, without all the interruptions.

Working long term care is demanding and chaotic not to mention the behaviors, but when you throw in many high maintenance families to 1 nurse? It's bound to become a disaster. I loved my residents and cared about them. (Many as in more than 10).

I am a good nurse, And I admit that I made bad choices at times.

But nurses do make mistakes,

A heavy work load, and needy residents. I was responsible for 24 residents in all unless the split nurse was downstairs and then I had 34, but I always had all the narcotics to account for the unit, and the refrigerated ones from another hall. More interruptions.

I will miss them but not management, or the extreme demands that 1 nurse is unable to meet on that particular unit .

I can hold their families hands and make them feel better or I can pass medications and do my work, tx fall and skin assessments and documentation but I can't do it all under those circumstances.

I can't tell you how many other nurses didn't want to work that unit for the reasons I just listed. When nurses are in this situation they are going to make mistakes, I should have gotten out within the first 3 months.

I wanted to try make it better. I even broke down and told the administrator it was too much for me ,that they needed 2 nurses on the unit at all times (in between DON”S) which is not something I wanted to admit , she told me to hang in there, they was trying to make changes to make it better. 4 months later and terminated, things had never been changed.

For those in management, try putting yourself in the role of that nurse. If it is not a task you can do yourself, ex: I had a resident being discharged to home with meds, the ADON and unit manager of the unit wanted me to print out the discharge summary and med instructions, I didn't know how I asked for help and got it about half an hour later, and was wrote up for not producing it fast enough by said ADON who admitted that she didn't know how to do this task herself. I had never been trained to do a discharge. However you would think that the unit manager would have been. I was still fairly new.

Nurses DO eat their young, and their new slightly more experienced recruits, Makes no sense to me why they do this. Everyone is different, sometimes these differences make things better. Give each other a chance before we start cutting them down. I am ready to quit nursing. Have been since this last job I was fired from. I had never been fired from any position until I became a nurse. Now I have been twice.

This last time I was let go, I was smiling as I was leaving because I knew I didn't have to deal with certain family members anymore.

I never thought I would be happy to be terminated.

At the same time,It is a huge blow to my self-esteem, I am afraid to go to work for fear of being written up again. I don't enjoy being paranoid. I have always tried to do my best in everything. My GPA was 3.2. Not the best but not the worst.

Instead of quitting the profession, I am going to a 3-11 shift fulltime. They are getting a New DON in the next 2 weeks. Hopefully the shorter hours and different shift will help. 12 hr. shifts tend to last 14 hrs. I believe most of mistakes were made after 10 hrs. into shift.

What would you do differently?