I just quit today after two weeks. I thought I was lucky enough to land a job at a SNF/subacute place nearby. After the first week, I was in for a rude awakening.
I had only 5 days of orientation in a 98 bed facility and was labeled charge nurse. Half the place is LTC, the other half subacute. 1st and 2nd shift have 3 nurses--usually 1RN and 3 LVN; 3rd shift usually has 2LVNs. Once I was on my own, passing meds to about 35 pts (in the LTC side) pretty much took me my entire shift. It was overwhelming and frustrating. On top of that, since I was an RN, I was responsible to hang IVs for all IV pts, no matter what side. I barely had time to document, and little to no time to assess the pts. As a friend had said, it felt like an assembly line--and that's how I felt I was treating the pts. There was no time to chat, no time to care, no time to critically think. Many of the staff members actually work on their OWN time (i.e. Not getting paid!) to chart, since many of them are afraid to get too much overtime since Administration will question them about it and may affect their performance review.
Many of my co workers were trying to convince me to stay, saying that it'll get better, that everything will become routine. But why is it that they are still taking more than their shift to do their work? It's simple: it's understaffed.
I brought all my issues up to the DON. All she said to me was, "I told you it's a lot of work and that it's a lot of patients. It wasn't going to be easy." Of course I didn't expect the work to be "easy", but I explained to her that there was no amount of training that could help me provide quality patient care if there is no time given to do that. She said she would like to hire more nurses, but Administration apparently doesn't want to hire anymore for any one shift. She just didn't seem to care too much.
I just had to vent and bring this up to all you new grads. I know I'm not the only that experienced this since I spoke and heard about a few people that experienced the same thing. I just want to give you some advice if you're looking into LTC or SNF. Some things I wish I had done before hand:
You may not see everything that goes on behind the scenes with this, but at least it's a good overview of the place. It's better than making any judgements based on how nice the building looks upfront or the nice painting and furniture in the reception area.
3) Ask the DON a lot of questions.
How many beds? As a new grad RN what are the job responsibilities? The job description? Expectations? Number of patients in your care? What is used for documentation/charting?
4)If you do commit, remember to buy some malpractice insurance (I guess that goes for any place you work at, but especially at a high liability job)
I hope this will be of some help to someone out there considering a job in a nursing home. I understand that many of us are still looking for a hospital job, but the pickings are few and far between. I haven't given up hope in finding that job, or even finding a job at another, better LTC facility in the mean time, but these are just some things to consider... Hopefully it'll save you from being burnt out or at least some tears.
