What is a bad day?

For me, there really are no bad days. There are challenging days, when new symptoms develop rapidly in multiple patients seemingly at the same time, or when team members have car problems, or develop illnesses.

Generally, even the "bad" days are rewarding. There is nothing like bringing peace, comfort and calm to patients and families when they are nearing the end of life.

March 30th will be one year as a hospice nurse. I've yet to have what I would consider an outright terrible day. I've had hard visits, and there have been times I worked more hours than I would have liked to have worked from a physical exhaustion point of view. But every day, in the end, is a good day.

Getting called to leave an actively dying patient with grieving family that you've been taking care of for a month to admit a 60-something year old who lives at home independently and who you didn't find eligible in the first place. bcs it's all about the census.

...not that i'm bitter today or anything.

See now thats a crappy agency. In my place of work, all I would have to say is I cannot leave this patient.

And if I don't find a patient eligible, I don't admit.

7 years in hospice and I’ve definitely had bad days, but usually when I was with a bad agency. Hostile admin/management exist in hospice also, it really depends on the agency.

In the field, if they are not properly staffed you can end up being run ragged and feeling guilty for patients and families when you have to put out fires that wouldn’t have started with better overall management of patient care from the team and admin.

And yes I’ve had visits where family scream in your face or try not to let you leave while physically threatening you, or throw furniture across the room, or confused and agitated patients who take a swing at you or throw BM at you.

Oh and if you are driving 100 miles a day to see patients, your odds of being in an accident are greater and you can get hit by another car TWICE in the same day (that was a doozy).

Of course these are not regular occurrences, they are the really bad days that are rare and you laugh about later. All in all I still never ever ever think “maybe I should get a job in a hospital”.