Venting about nursing.

[European]

I have been a nurse for about five years. I have some emergency room and ICU experience. I went into nursing with maybe the Romantic idea to help people in need and learn more about medical science. Nevertheless, the more I do this job, the more I get discouraged about it. The endless documenting and the tons of data that it produces takes away a lot of patient time and I think most of the data is lost in some nameless server. Bureaucracy is staggering and Hospital politics are tiring when every week you have to deal with some kind of patient satisfaction survey or whatever. Management in most cases does not care about you as long as they're meeting their unrealistic goals. I want to like this job because I feel that what we do is important for patients but I'm getting discouraged from it as time goes on. What are your thoughts on it?

[SnowShoeRN]

Yep. You're not alone with this. Many many many nurses are really fried and irritated by all the beauracracy/paperwork/red tape/etc that takes time away from direct patient care. And, honesltly, as the ACA becomes more common place and hospitals strive to reach good Press Ganey scores for reimbursment (among other reasons), as well as our society becomes more litiginous, I imagine things will only get worse.

I don't guess there's all that much to do if you want to keep working in a hospital, except try to find some benefit in some of it and understand things from the beauracratic side. There are some areas of nursing that have less red tape that others, but you'll always encounter it to some degree. :/ Best of luck.

[European]

Bump. ......

[sunnyskies9]

The beauty about nursing is that there are so many areas you can get into outside of the hospital. It sounds like you are tired of the hospital environment and politics. I can tell you from experience, it's so much nicer outside of acute care. I have worked case management, and it was nice to actually build a relationship with patients, and I felt like I had more of an impact on them. I'm currently working cardiac rehab, and I absolutely LOVE it. I could definitely see myself in this role for the remainder of my nursing career without issue. Maybe try to get something part time outside of the hospital environment (home care, case management, public health, etc) and stay prn at the hospital to get your feet wet. I was burnt out from acute care after only 2 years, and I am so glad I got out of it.