Why do I feel so guilt-ridden?

Nurses General Nursing

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I use about 2 sick days per year, this week alone I had to call in 3 times for vomiting and diarrhea. Like on the bathroom floor in a puddle of my own vomit, can't stand up because I am too dizzy from dehydration sickness, yet I feel guilty for calling in. I have had these symptoms for the past week and managed to work 4 days out of seven, but just could not go in for those other 3. I am racked with guilt, maybe because I was told if I showed for work they would hydrate me with IV fluid so that I could work. I have worked in other professions and have never been made to feel so guilty for being ill. What is it with nursing that makes management feel we are expendible, have no lives outside of work, live to serve administration? I am just so depressed and fed up, I feel trapped, like I am in a dead end profession where I get little respect from management and even less from the patients. Thanks for letting me vent.

Hey -- just remember the little gem from nursing school--

:idea:TAKE CARE OF THE NURSE FIRST!!!!!:idea:

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Hey -- just remember the little gem from nursing school--

:idea:TAKE CARE OF THE NURSE FIRST!!!!!:idea:

:Ball:

I went to work one day with a migraine because I had been given a hard time about calling out (by administration) Well, that day I made a serious drug error and overmedicated a patient with narcotic!! Luckily there was no adverse outcome - but I was so stressed that I might have harmed a patient!!! Never again! If I'm sick-I'm sick - I worked too hard to earn my license and I'm not going to allow a cheap hospital administrator to make me loose it.

Don't feel guilty-understand that you knew the correct action and took it.

Unfortunately nurses don't speak up enough to advocate for themselves or each other. :nurse:

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You feel guilty because from the first day of our education nurses have the message "you are responsible" hammered into us.

Now sure, we really are responsible for a lot, and ought to be - I firmly agree that we ought not practice outside our range of competence, for example, and of course we have a host of duties regarding self-education and safe practice and patient care.

However, we also find ourselves answerable for things that aren't within our control: patient outcomes, doctors who leave bed rails down, a cleaner not posting that the floor's wet, rates of MRSA on the ward, allied health and medical discharge planning, doctors not calling in ICU fast enough on an unwell patient, the previous shift not ordering staff, and making sure the family don't feed a nil orally patient. These come to mind from my last four shifts - all things my colleagues and I have no control over, but were somehow still responsible for.

This is especially the case with sick leave - ever-present in this is the idea that, although we do not generally feel valued by admin, we are irreplaceable. Without us our patients will suffer, our colleagues will have be laden with an untenable burden, and our selfishness will blow the budget. We expect things of ourselves (and each other) that we would never expect of our patients! I can't tell you the number of patients who've been told of for bringing in laptops or conducting business on the phone because 'you're sick and you need a break'. But you? Standing in a pool of vomit, dizzy from dehydration and being ill? Just pull an IV pole around with you and you'll be fine!

I'm sorry - I seem to have hijacked your thread with my own little rant! My point is that if you're sick you need to rest. If you're sick enough that IV fluids are even being joked about, you need at the least to be home in bed resting.

Repeat after me:

Although I am awesome, I am not indispensible

My health is as important as the health of my patients

A sick nurse cannot be an effective nurse

Slow sips of flat lemonade and a dry cracker

Feel better soon :)

Bingo, bingo, bingo! Perfect! (Which, of course, means I agree..... :rotfl: )
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this past august i came down with official bona fide "fifth disease" (human parvovirus), i should have built up antibodies as a child but didn't, and missed 5 total 12 hour shifts occuring over 2 weeks time. i was so weak that for the first week i couldn't go any further than from my bed to the bathroom without stopping to rest. the day before i went back to work i was seen driving to the pharmacy, i had just left my dr's office.

went i got to work the next day, i was taken to the hr office where my nurse manger attempted to fire me and force me to sign a document stating i had falsified info by "saying you were sick when i saw you out driving". my nurse manager looked at me and said "i saw you driving, it's nothing personal." she did not know that i had 7 different dr's statements covering all 15 days i was sick. even days i wasn't scheduled were covered. i called my dr's office right there from the hr office and fmla papers were started. and as far as my nurse manager...she had to eat crow.

i was definately not the first to be done this way. we had another nurse who had a stroke and had tried to come back to work and was having alot of difficulties and the same nurse mananger fired her. our unit clerk's son was in a horrible car accident and was totally in bed for 10 weeks and our nurse manager called her at home and told her "you do know that i can post your position" :angryfire it maybe childish, ok i know it is, but i cannot wait to look at my nurse manager and say "it's nothing personal!"

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Our hospital doesn't even HAVE sick days.

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Note to Huggietoes: If you do not take care of yourself, and that includes not just when you are sick but time for sleep and play and exercise and romance - you WILL NOT BE ABLE TO TAKE CARE OF OTHERS FOR LONG. You will burn out, big time. I've been in nursing for twenty years, and this is the ONE lesson I wish I'd learned on my first day on the job.

I hope you are no longer barfing, and that you can assert yourself with whatever dumbbutt offered to give you an IV so you could work sick. Good luck!

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Everyone you work with knows if you abuse the call-ins or not. If you've only called in sick twice this year (assuming they weren't holidays) you have no reason to feel guilty! Granted, your washed-out, dizzy-headed, cramping self draped over a chair 8 to 12 hours might mean fewer pts. for everyone else, but it really doesn't do anyone any favors. Take care of you--you'll feel better so much quicker!

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I called out Monday because I could tell a cold was starting and I hoped to head it off. On Tuesday my asst manager said "And what bug did YOU have?" in a tone implying I wasn't sick (of course). I said "Well, you can probably hear it" - my voice was starting to go and she said "NO!" in the most obnoxious challenging way. Well, I went to work on Wednesday with NO VOICE AT ALL because I didn't want to use any more sick time . . . and I guess because I was afraid of another nasty comment. She was already on her Christmas vacation.

So I worked a 12 yesterday, making other people "interpret" phone calls for me because I couldn't project my whisper loud enough to be heard. Unfortunately my patient was fully a & o - hoping for an obtunded vented pt!- and couldn't understand a word I said. The RT set me up with a racemic epi treatment twice, which brought back a very hoorifice voice for a few hours. I think it worsened the whole thing though because it hurt more after and encouraged me to keep forcing my voice. I still have no voice today. I'm still PO'd with the manager about her comment. No Christmas carols for me this year, I guess. I can't sing anyway.

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Specializes in Rodeo Nursing (Neuro).

I hope you're feeling better, huggietoes.

I called in sick on my last day of orientation. I really hated to, since I had decided I was going to like my job, but I decided I didn't need a job that would fire me for doing the right thing. I didn't get fired and worked my next scheduled shift (2 days later), but barely finished that and had to call off the next two days. Apart from a barely noticeable scratchy throat, my only symptom was a 103F fever that wouldn't break. Finally called my HMO and they told me to go to ER. Doc said I had "a virus", gave me a handful of Tylenol and a note, and said I would be better by Sunday. Sunday morning I woke feeling great and went back to work. Guess that's why they get the big bucks.

I had jokingly asked the doc if he thought it might be ebola. He said, "We're not in Africa." When I returned to work, we had a pt in isolation for Malaria. Then I read The Hot Zone, about an ebola outbreak in Reston, Va. I'm not saying I had ebola, but calling off was the right thing to do. I did get a couple of perfect attendance awards, subsequently (8 hrs of PDO time--kinda ironic) but nursing school hasn't helped my attendance, lately. Too many hours, not enough sleep, but I'm hoping to be in remission, soon.

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I called out Monday because I could tell a cold was starting and I hoped to head it off. On Tuesday my asst manager said "And what bug did YOU have?" in a tone implying I wasn't sick (of course). I said "Well, you can probably hear it" - my voice was starting to go and she said "NO!" in the most obnoxious challenging way. Well, I went to work on Wednesday with NO VOICE AT ALL because I didn't want to use any more sick time . . . and I guess because I was afraid of another nasty comment. She was already on her Christmas vacation.

So I worked a 12 yesterday, making other people "interpret" phone calls for me because I couldn't project my whisper loud enough to be heard. Unfortunately my patient was fully a & o - hoping for an obtunded vented pt!- and couldn't understand a word I said. The RT set me up with a racemic epi treatment twice, which brought back a very hoorifice voice for a few hours. I think it worsened the whole thing though because it hurt more after and encouraged me to keep forcing my voice. I still have no voice today. I'm still PO'd with the manager about her comment. No Christmas carols for me this year, I guess. I can't sing anyway.

I would have been upset at the comment too, but what exactly did you accomplish by going in to work in that condition? Do you think anyone in management, including your asst manager who is enjoying her Christmas vacation, would have gone to work in that condition? They probably call out for a lot less.

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I have the same problem! I feel guilty when I am sick and call in. I hate it. And with most of my jobs, especially in LTC you are made to feel horrible for calling in. I never understood it. Do they really want you to come in sick and make all the patients/residents sick? These people already have compromised immune systems!

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I would have been upset at the comment too, but what exactly did you accomplish by going in to work in that condition? Do you think anyone in management, including your asst manager who is enjoying her Christmas vacation, would have gone to work in that condition? They probably call out for a lot less.

I accomplished not using 12 more hours of sick time - it's combined time off, so time you use being sick is less time for vacation.

I agree though, it was kind of ridiculous. I did take adequate care of my two critically ill patients but it was frustrating and I probably made myself sicker. And spread some cold germs around.

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