If all the nursing school suddenly open the door and let more people in, there will be a overflowed. Think about all those software programmers back in the days, lawyers, MBAs. We used to think lawyers and MBAs can make a pretty good living but now there are too many out on the streets.
I'm sure you guys don't want to see the same thing happen in nursing, don't you? DO NOT increase enrollments of nursing schools please. Otherwise, we will all suffer. Graduate 10,000 new nurses each year across the nation would be enough.
If you are in nursing education, tell the dean DO NOT increase the enrollments therwise, we will all be screwed.
I agree.This thread is very discouraging to all the the the people who are are thinking to go into nursing in future.It does seems that based on this thread Nurses eat their young.I'm going into my second year of nursing and when/if I become a nurse I will never tell anyone they shouldnt go into nursing because I feel like someone might take my job one day.Live and let people live.And about rude nurses in hospital.I too can count on the fingers of one hand nurses who were nice to me during my previous rotation.I understand that people are overworked,short staffed,tired,burned but is this behavior a way to solve the problems I dont thinks so....
Im not worried about someone taking my job in the future and I find this thead not that discouraging, but more as encouraging and its helping me understand better what I will be getting into after I get my degree. Its unfortuante that there are so many rude nurses though that part is a little discouraging. I still really want to be a nurse. I understand that with every job there is the good and the bad. Too bad that CEO's are only worried about money and that they are cutting costs. Im not suprised that those bastards dont give a damn about giving great care to patients are seeing that nurses are being compensated what they should be. Iam enjoying this thread though, I like reading everyones point of views.
See Grace Oz's post. I'm not the only one who feels that there isn't a nursing shortage, but a shortage of nurses willing to put up with the B.S. that the customer service generation has created. Patients back then used to be patients, now they are clients. And we have to cater to every need and their families needs and if we don't we now have surveys that rate the customer service they received during their stay. So we could all get reprimanded because we didn't bring a glass of water fast enough to a patient because another patient was coding. But that doesn't matter, the customer is always right no matter what. And patients don't care if another patient is not breathing or doesn't have a heart beat, they want their water...
Great post! I have so many bad things to say about how our society these days is going down the toilet and up sh*t creek and its a damn shame people treat nurses like crap. If people want to be catered to they can take their ass to a damn restaurant or spa. Sorry for all the cursing, the post just got me a little fired up, I work as a waitress and there are times when I have to put up with customers crap. I would never treat a nurse with disrespect I always hear horror stories how you all have to put up with doctors thinking they are inferior to you and then add patients and their families to the mix giving you hell too? Yes I understand now why so many nurses are going on to other areas of nursing. How do you all deal with that kind of thing?
Great post! I have so many bad things to say about how our society these days is going down the toilet and up sh*t creek and its a damn shame people treat nurses like crap. If people want to be catered to they can take their ass to a damn restaurant or spa. Sorry for all the cursing, the post just got me a little fired up, I work as a waitress and there are times when I have to put up with customers crap. I would never treat a nurse with disrespect I always hear horror stories how you all have to put up with doctors thinking they are inferior to you and then add patients and their families to the mix giving you hell too? Yes I understand now why so many nurses are going on to other areas of nursing. How do you all deal with that kind of thing?
I have no problem telling it like it is. Thanks for the compliment.
I believe there are enough nurses if they would let us just do nursing functions. But if the phlebotomist can't get the blood-let the nurse do it, if Resp. Therapy can't get to the vent soon enough to make the change, let the nurse do it. If one doctor wants to tell another doctor something..have the nurse tell him. If the family needs updated..let the nurse do it. If the patient needs a drink of water, bedpan or cleaned up ...tell the nurse. Most of the families really don't come to see the patient at visiting times they come to "talk to the nurse" . Why sit and scream about a nursing shortage
when they can't even keep the ones they have now. Of course we all know who benefits from the nursing shortage..the hospitals.
I think we need new nurses because trying to make a life long career of beside nursing must be nearly impossible! I was a teacher and then I worked in various corporate jobs before getting my LPN in Dec '07; I will finish my RN in April '09. I was a CNA and I worked at a hospital long before I got my first bachelor's degree. My mother is a nurse, my cousin's are nurses, my aunt's are nurses...so I thought I knew what it would be like.
Ah, how wrong I was. You will never know what it's like until it's YOU standing in those shoes. On that day when you can longer say "I'll get his/her nurse I'm just a student/CNA/Whatever" then you will know.
Not to say that I am bitter because I am not. I'm still too new a nurse to have reached that point yet but I can't see working this dang hard for the rest of my life when there are easier ways to make a living. Yep I said it there are easier ways to make 60-70k a year then dealing with all that we have to deal with as nurses.
Going into the profession I thought "After only a year I can make (as an LPN) more than what my starting salary was a teacher with a bachelors degree and after 2 years I will make a lot more than that...what's not to like?
Well after less than a year I'm still going to finish the RN but with much less enthusiam then I had when I got my LPN because reality has set in.
I think what a lot of students don't understand is our LOVE/HATE relationship with nursing. I love it and I hate it at the same time.
I love the autonomy of my job...I love being in charge because it suits my personality type.
I love mentoring the CNAs who are in nursing school (I'm a born teacher)
I really do care about my resident's. Some of them are very difficult but they can also make you laugh and sometimes cry. Boy do I get sad when I come in for a shift to find out that Mr./Mrs. _____ got sent out or died. You really do get attached.
I also love the satisfaction of going home (sitting on the couch with my throbbing feet after a hot shower) and knowing that I have done something that actually matters.
What do I hate about nursing?
I hate some of the lazy co-workers I have to deal with.
I hate the uncaring administrators who give us very little to work with and then expect miracles.
I hate the constant addition of new paperwork because the state says we are deficient in a certain area. Instead of finding out why we are deficient and helping to correct the problem we just get a new form to fill out and threats of write ups for not being able to squeeze out more time to complete the paperwork.
I also hate non-nursing staff and other people who don't know squat about my job but think they do and aren't afraid to say it.
The SLP who comes on the floor to do a swallow eval and argues with me because he thinks I should advocate for a GT tube being placed on a hospice patient who is days away from dying from cancer.
The CNAs who don't seem to grasp the concept of patient rights and argue with me becuase I will not snatch away a cookie or soda from an AX0X3 resident who is a non-compliant diabetic.
The dietitian who's kitchen staff forgot to bring up so and so's tray and now expects me to close my med cart and go to the basement dining room to pick up a tray (and thinks I'm a B for refusing).
The family member who doesn't understand that me or my three aides do not have the time to leave the floor to get them sodas and chips just because they are paying a lot of money for granny to be there so now I am their personal slave. Never mind that I have residents who need meds, treatments, etc.
Then the icing on the cake...the 81lb, 98-year-old fully demented, GT feeder, who decides at precisely that moment to go bad and of course she is a full-code and her overly anxious son wants everything done for her.
Guess what's the best part of all of this. Those scenarios happened simultaneously and it was enough to make me wanna slam the cart drawer, scream, and run for the parking lot!
I could go on and on but I won't.
We do need more nurses and we will continue to need more nurses because until these working conditions get better nurses will continue to take every opportunity that they can to get away from direct patient care.
I no longer consider bedside nursing as something that my body will be able to do until I am 60ish. I'm already in my early 30s and despite being in pretty good shape I know that physically I cannot do more than 5-10 years of this.
I feel for the patients and maybe someday I will be one too but I'm not martyr and I will not be putting up with all of the crap for the rest of my working life.
:yeah:
:bow:
Especially:
I also hate non-nursing staff and other people who don't know squat about my job but think they do and aren't afraid to say it.
I worked once as a housekeeper in a hospital, than was an RPN(LPN) student, than and RPN, before becoming an RN. As a housekeeper and a nursing student, I do remember how judgemental towards nurses and only realized how biased and uninformed I was AFTER I started working as a nurse.:imbar:imbar:imbar
It's beyond karma, it's beyond payback to describe the judgementmental, biased, and uniformed attitude and crap I've endured since becoming a nurse. Nothing like a transporter who's seen the patient all of 10 seconds acting like an MD and telling YOU what should and shouldn't be done and questioning why and what for, eh.:angryfire
There is one level of patient centered and then there is a point when it becomes a danger to the patient.
When "patient-centered" distractions occur to the point that it seriously impairs safety and pt health, it ceases to be health care and can turn into "death care".
I have no problem with well behaved children, but what parent brings a child to the ER with an 'emergency" cold in their heelies and lets them skate all over the ER, endangering themselves and others?
"Patient-centered" care means doing things best for the patient. Unrestricted visiting hours, and dealing with children that get fidgety after 10 minutes, when a grandparent is fresh postop or anxious, is not helpful or healing for the patient. I am a grandeparent and certainly don't want the cute little tikes around when I am drugged up, vomitting or undergoing a GI prep.
I have repeatedly dealt with visitors that do not know the word "NO". I have had hundreds of patients tell me to put up the "NO VISITORS" sign because they were exhausted, just to have pushy relatives sneak in with friends/yelling children at 2300. After politely reminded of the "No Visitor" request, we get the "Oh, s/he always wants to see ME!" (no, s/he doesn't).
And when visitors repeatedly interfere with the staff preping meds, they ARE endangering patient health.
Would one rather have their loved one alive, and receiving the right carefully prepared meds, relaxed and rested or dead/harmed from a med error, because the nurse was too busy, dodging kids, answering Uncle Bill's 13th call about wheter the pt will be able to play golf next week, or getting the "lightning" inservice on the hospital's 5 for 5 program.
I'll opt for the live patient rather than the dead/harmed one...even if it makes the visiting hours inconvenient for the visitors.
PS. I had a mother hospitalized for 5 weeks, in 1970 - I was 6. I dealt with not being to see her. I had a father overseas during Vietnam - and did not see or speak with him for 22 monthes - communicated only by letters and tapes. I survived as did they...learning to deal with such issues makes one stronger. And while I would never suggest being that strict again (people are not that disciplined anymore, I fear), some restrictions would be a good thing and would help the pt.
What other profession puts up with constant interferance from their "clients"? I have never heard of a school that allows parents to stay all day with their little tykes. Doctors don't have families sitting in the OR watching the surgery. When are nurses going to take the bull by he horns and put a stop to this?
Call security and have visitors escorted out of the hospital. Send them to administration to sit next to the hospital CEO and give him advice on running the hospital. You would see how quickly the practice of "open visitation" would end. Tell administration you want visitor passes instituted again, two to a patient. Make your own if you have to. JMHO and my NY $0.02.
Yeah, I guess all of the people who wanted what they wanted at that moment thought I was an evil old witch but guess what? Who cares what they think! I got that 98-year-old assessed and out the door w/o her dying on me because at the end of the day that is what I am there for. Can you all believe she survived her bout of pneumonia and managed to come back us w/o any decubiti?
Sorry but in nursing as in life you are going to find out that you can't always make everyone happy. You can't always say yes and you can't always provide 'service' with a smile.
It's called prioritizing and my priority was getting that 98-year-old to a hospital before she died on me. Sorry for the dietitian, the SLP, the CNA, and the family that wanted their chips. So what if they think that I'm not Mary Poppins who said that is what a nurse has to be anyway?
:rolleyes:umm.. I guess it's a bit too late for that... Here in the Philippines we are actually OVERFLOWING ( in terms of Nursing students I mean)...
in 2007 or whatever, 70,000 newly grads took a chance of taking LOCAL BOARD EXAM HERE and 24, 000 of which passed... :no:Imagine 70 THOUSAND!!!!! 24 thousand passed but with no assurance of a job..
There's no more room for new graduates and new nurse here... tsk tsk, but yet a lot still takes it...
:eek:oh my goodness, soon they'll be cursing out why they took the profession in the first place if they cant used it anyways...
Plus, it's even harder to get a job, if you're new in the field... goodluck!!!
Now that's a scary thought! That just reinforces my opinion of many of the nursing schools there when the passing rate is so low.
I had a 15+ year career in software engineering, and am doing the same thing. Many of my former co-workers thought I was crazy, and perhaps I am, but everyone who knows me (and thus, whose opinions I actually value) believes I would be a great asset to the nursing field. I have a lot to offer, both in terms of life experience and compassion, and as I have gotten older, my priorities have changed. I am no longer interested in working 60-80 hour weeks increasing a corporation's profit margin; I would rather spend that time doing something that has real meaning, like taking care of those who cannot care for themselves. I would rather fall into bed exhausted at the end of a long day, knowing I helped saved a life, or actually helped someone who needed help, rather than wondering how I'm going to be asked to help the CEO rake in another million tomorrow.
I realize I'm still new at this (1st yr nursing student), but isn't that the kind of attitude you NEED to be a good nurse? It's about CARING, not keeping people out of the profession for your own selfish reasons. At least that's what I got out of reading the brochure. JMO
Okay, like the name says, I spent 20 years in computer engineering, and 4 in disaster recovery. Why did I leave? MBAs started running (and ruining) the show. And I see this starting with nursing. You know what was one of the first things the MBAs did? "There's no programmer shortage, so if you don't want to work 80 hours a week, I'll get someone who will." At the time there WAS a shortage -- there's not now because so many people got laid off d/t the field being ran by people who couldn't understand what we did, and plowing good companies into the ground.
You want to keep nurses? LISTEN to them, don't blow smoke up our scrubs. Don't hire a VP of nursing for a hospital who's got an MBA, sat thru the classes passed the NCLEX and never bedside nursed outside of clinicals. Don't have the CEO of the hospital tell an auditorium full of nurses that working there is a privilage that many people want and a lot of the people working there don't appreciate (read: if you're unhappy, don't let the door hit ya where the good lord split ya).
Don't sit in a meeting and tell nurses that it's cheaper to hire nurses out of school, and then in the next breath ask why so many Rapid Response Team calls are happening now (uh, because I'm the most "time in title" nurse some nights, and I've been at this just at a year!)
Never forget that nursing school may give you knowledge, but it's experience that gives you wisdom.
And like computer engineering, the health care system and facilities within it are run by people that don't understand the job and they're running nurses off in the process and compromising patients. Competent, capable, compassionate nurses who entered the profession with enthusiasm and passion who after years of banging their heads in futility to improve their ability and that of their co-workers to provide care in a safe environment that benefits patients.
I think if the health care industry was really concerned about retaining the experienced nurses, they wouldn't be blowing smoke up our scrubs. Right now they're not. They see nurses as an expense that needs to be contained without realizing the fiscal soundness of retaining good nurses. More expense is incurred in the long run, and this is what they close their eyes to. The biggest expense is paid for by their "customers" and our patients. This is what truly burns out good nurses, when you know as a nurse how it should be and your forced to watch patients suffer because it isn't.
When we get students on our floor, and they ask me what's the difference between a clinical and a job on the floor as a licensed nurse, I tell them they don't compare at all. Last year I was the student, indignant because the nurses weren't "appreciative" of my giving PO meds and a bath or doing a dressing change. I was sure I was going to change the world. News flash: most of the world doesn't want to be changed, they just want to be put together enough to go back and do the same self-destructive behaviors that put them in the hospital to begin with.
I'm also starting my RN program in 5 days -- will my attitude as a student now, having been an LPN for a year, be different? Absolutely. I'll catch the patient's nurse, quickly tell them I'm an LPN on a tele/ICU stepdown floor, but I'm working as a RN student nurse (and therefore, can't do what I usually do under my own license), so what can I do to help them, besides the A/B/C my nursing instructor wants me to do? Not tell them what they are doing wrong, chide them on their callous behavior, or act like I'm God's gift to nursing, which I'm sure I probably did last year.
Like I've said before, school gives you knowledge, experience (after pass the boards) is what gives you wisdom.
In all honesty, before we became nurses, irregardless of our background before becoming a student, we all were judgemental and indignant at one time or another about what we PERCEIVED from the nurses we interacted with as a student, whether or not that perception was accurate.
because I am not. I'm still too new a nurse to have reached that point yet but I can't see working this dang hard for the rest of my life when there are easier ways to make a living. Yep I said it there are easier ways to make 60-70k a year then dealing with all that we have to deal with as nurses. 
:yeah:
:bow:
princesasabia
37 Posts
Im not worried about someone taking my job in the future and I find this thead not that discouraging, but more as encouraging and its helping me understand better what I will be getting into after I get my degree. Its unfortuante that there are so many rude nurses though that part is a little discouraging. I still really want to be a nurse. I understand that with every job there is the good and the bad. Too bad that CEO's are only worried about money and that they are cutting costs. Im not suprised that those bastards dont give a damn about giving great care to patients are seeing that nurses are being compensated what they should be. Iam enjoying this thread though, I like reading everyones point of views.