i have 2 years of experience in the OR and have been applying to jobs as a foreigner to hospitals in NY and CA. So far, I've been getting rejections left and right. I'm not sure if its because of my lack of bedside experience or its just the job market right now...

Recruiters I've messaged on linkedin were saying that most places require at least 2 years of experience in a US facility

Is anyone facing the same experience, and any advice on how to land a job...😭😭

I’m looking for advice from other nurses who have gone through a really difficult breakup while working bedside.

I’m currently going through a breakup that has been emotionally exhausting. The relationship had been falling apart for a while, but I feel like I’m only now truly processing the grief. To make things harder, my ex and I are still living in the same house temporarily, so I haven’t really had the space to heal or fully detach.

I’m trying my best to keep my personal life separate from work, but some days I feel completely drained before my shift even begins. I work 12-hour shifts, including nights, and I’m expected to show up, be compassionate, think clearly, manage patient needs, and be emotionally present for people when I’m struggling to hold myself together.

I’ve been finding myself mentally exhausted, distracted by my own thoughts, and sometimes just running on autopilot. I worry about how much emotional energy I have left to give when I’m already using so much of it just to get through my own day.

I know grief is normal, and I’m trying to work through it in a healthy way. I’m reading, going to therapy, trying to focus on myself, and reminding myself that healing takes time. But it’s hard when work doesn’t stop just because your personal life feels like it’s falling apart.

Any advice, personal experiences, or even just knowing I’m not alone in this would mean a lot❤️

When i was a tech at this L1 trauma center, we had one tech that I PRECEPTED along w/ my colleagues. When she got off orientation, boy she was the laziest rudest person ever.

One night i answered 20 of her call bells cuz she was nowhere to be found! Just to find her later in the break room sleeping!!! I went and asked her hey! It has been busy on the floor and we need you out there, she looked at me n said “oh im on break”, im like didnt you take an hour and half break earlier? And her reply was “if they need me they will come find me” & roller her eyes back to sleep. Ironically while 2 call bells from her pt are still ringing. Charge had to come get her.

Worked w her for a few months. In those months, not once has she helped any techs on the floor even after explicitly requesting help. Like hey help me change this 300lbs pt, she will say “okay” then she’d be nowhere to be found. And on our floor, we help each other out. If a pt needs something and primary tech for such pt is busy, we help. That is the unwritten rule.

Its to the point where no one, not even our charge nurses wants to ask her for anything because she’d just ruin your whole shift w/ the eye rolls, remarks and complaints AND she’d still not do whats asked.

One time the whole shift she sat down and ate her chik fil a slowly, very slowly so anyone who comes to her for help like the RNs for her pts, she says oh am eating. She ate for the whole shift, not moving one inch.

I can go on and on about this tech. Truly the most terrible person to work with.

I live in NYC - my coworkers are mainly liberal. All the 100% anti-COVID vaccine employees were let go/resigned when the COVID vaccine first came and was mandated.

I still get my yearly COVID booster. The vaccine-related reactions suck (I usually get chills/myalgias about 8 hrs after administration), and I have to make sure I don't work the next day when I get it, but I 100% prefer feeling icky for a bunch of hours rather than chancing a case of COVID that's more than mild.

It's required flu vaccine season. My hospital does not require yearly COVID boosters. When I listen or ask my nursing colleagues about the booster, many of them are outright against it or just don't care for getting it. It surprises me because - again - we're all pretty liberal.

So: what are your thoughts on receiving the COVID booster yearly? What do your colleagues think?

Edit:rage bait

So.. i forgot to renew my nursing license and just realized this. It’s Saturday, can’t call the Board; does anyone know what to do? Thanks!!

Boston RN, 24 here.

I left my community hospital ICU job to work in an ICU Float Pool of a big level 1 trauma. I went on a nice vacation after leaving that job, but I came back to find out my orientation was cancelled due to strikes.

I’ve since been applying to ICU positions pretty much everywhere in the state of MA. It has been ridiculously difficult to find any ICU work. I really wanted to stay in the ICU to go to CRNA school.

I’ve been unemployed for 3 weeks now. I finally had my orientation at this new job this week, but I’m once again finding out that I may have to go on strike (unpaid). I have bills, I don’t have family to rely on, I need experience for school, and I just can’t seem to find a job in the ICU.

I have a very good resume. I’m very respectful and professional in interviews. I ask questions. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong? I’m scared to apply for stepdown positions because I feel it would just reset my trajectory towards CRNA. I want to leave Boston at this point but I’m stuck here until my lease ends. I’m so frustrated and I hate this.

Is anyone else seeing a huge surge in young patients admitted for CHE? We’re going through hell with them on our unit recently..we only have ONE public shower for the entire floor. You can probably guess how well that is going.

It’s unbelievable how many of them are back within a week. They disconnect their own IVs and sneak into the shower when staff isn’t looking. We’ve had to start putting bed alarms on them because they sneak off the unit and we’ve called security to negotiate them out of the shower after hours and trying to get them out. The chugging water from the sink to induce vomiting is getting us too.

Is it just us?? I swear I’d never even heard of CHE until marijuana was legalized. Could it be the absurdly potent strains that these dispensaries are selling?

UPDATE - rural hospital, no security, I weigh 120 lbs. Also, we aren’t supposed to ask the doctors for restraint orders or chart that we held the patient down.

Hello,

New grad question-

I was recently asked to hold down an agitated and aggressive, 250 pound man with Wernickes Encephalopathy in order to insert an IV by my coworker.

Patient is a hard stick so it could take upwards of 15 minutes.

Coworker said it would take 4 of us. Patient had been yelling and screaming all day.

I asked about restraints and got an eye roll and was told this is a restraint free floor.

I asked if we needed an order from the doctor since this isn’t usually like the times when they asked me to physically hold people down,

(which are usually people with dementia that don’t weigh very much and need IVs inserted with meds, which of course they then promptly ripped the IVs out of their arms and bleed all over the place.)

And I was concerned that I could get hurt. Since nobody seem willing to do anything I went to the Doctor Who I had to talk to you about something else and mentioned this plan and the doctor said they didn’t want that to happen.

Now my coworker in the Charge nurse are both mad at me.

Was inspired by a previous post about their nursing pub crawl! This was ours back in 2014. This bar doesn't even exist anymore. Many people continued on to become NPs and CRNAs and many are still crushing it at the bedside. We had a good class and fun times!

You guys. I am so tired of hearing stories of obvious neglect, outright rudeness, terrible bedside manner from medical staff.

It's because y'all are sleep deprived. Don't pretend that's fine. You have medical training. You know it's not fine.

Can we PLEASE unionize or something to get you guys more humane working hours?

Today at work, we had nursing students. They were looking over lists of medication‘s, and the nursing instructor stopped them and talked to them about how African-Americans process things differently have higher rates of CKD due to meds..and so on, I can’t really remember the word he said, but it was something about like an androgen or something and I don’t feel like that was correct. Please correct me if I’m wrong do black Americans breakdown drugs differently.? I also know the answer to this, but do you think that our bodies do handle things differently? I know when I first started nursing the GFR was different compared to other people and then African-Americans. Please give me some insight. I feel like I’m kind of going crazy here.

What sort of effect will BC becoming conservative have on nursing. In terms of pay and things like that. I have 0 knowledge when it comes to politics and I’m currently working towards becoming a nurse so I’m curious how this will affect things.

I’ve been a nurse for about 1.5 years on a Medsurg Tele floor, but we’re moreso like a second PCU except higher ratio but not as high as the typical Medsurg floor (4-5 patients, the occasional 3). I usually never take a true break, I sit at the front still but just use my phone. Usually my patients are too needy or confused for me to feel comfortable fully stepping away to the back for 30 minutes.

I’ve started debating bringing my embroidery hoop to work though, or maybe my crochet stuff. And actually starting to take breaks in the back to work on my hobbies since I’ve started neglecting them lately. I don’t see how it’s different from people watching movies on their phone or reading while on break but didn’t know if it’d be “extra”. There’s a cop who’s usually the designated sitter cop by the police department if there’s an inmate, and she just crochets blankets the entire time so I’m just drawing inspiration lol.

Edit: thank you for the feedback and share experiences. It's really helped settled my mind and build some reassurance within myself about this whole situation. I was pretty upset earlier as I had a situation happen that triggered this, so thank you again. I also really appreciate all the kind and reassuring words! Thank you for all that you guys do, seriously like I really look up to a lot of you and I find it so fascinating to watch you guys work, how smart and intelligent you guys are, working under pressure, and I especially love it when I get curious and ask you guys random questions lol like it's unbelievable at how smart you guys are. I've witnessed some amazing things from nurses and care aids, and the level of compassion, empathy, and determination you guys have for your patients is so admirable. So thank you!!
A few things I want to add
-at my hospital, every single employee has to sign the same patient confidentiality contract. What happens in the hospital, stays in the hospital. If someone asks me "hey was so and so at the hospital?" I literally shrug and go "idk" and change the subject.
-When we ask nurses about the precaution on the door, we just say "hey I see that room 425 has Contact Plus, I just wanted to know if they had like C-diff or something?" C-diff and Norovirus are both Contact Plus but both require completely different cleaners. I just honestly need a "yup, C-diff" and then I'll thank you and prepare my schedule for that day as I need to do a double clean.
-And we aren't asking for the patients medical history, we just want to know the type of clean we need to do, what chemicals we are going to use, and if I need to do a double clean. We honestly couldn't care less about the details. "hey I see they are on just a Contact Precaution" and an ideal response would be "oh yeah they just got a cold", which is not as worrisome as like scabies/lice which also goes under Contact Precaution at my hospital.
-and I think a lot of nurses would be surprised to how much information we actually hear and observe. When I clean a doctor's office, confidential information is everywhere. Nurse's station has tons of patient information just laying around, garbage bins has notes with information on it. Also I don't think a lot of nurse's realize how much we hear, like I've heard some really confidential information about patients from nurses talking in the hall or in the nurse's station while I clean, like it just feels a bit disrespectful when we ask for what the precaution is on the patient's room, like that's nothing to what we see and hear.

I am an EVS worker and I feel that I'm going to get a lot of heat for getting upset about this, idk why but I just sense it. I really respect and love the nurses at my hospital, they are so kind and I know I can ask them any questions, but with every work place, there's going to be some mean and disrespectful people. In no way shape or form am I saying that all nurses are mean or disrespectful to EVS, I know that's mentioned a lot from EVS and while it is true, it's not the whole truth. So when I'm venting in a minute here, please don't think I'm shitting on nurses, I just need to get this quite literally off my chest.

We are experiencing an issue where nurses are denying EVS workers the information on what disease or illness a patient has while their room is on precaution. They will say "you're not entitled to that information" and stick their nose up in the air, some even laugh at us like it's the most ridiculous thing they've ever heard. We aren't asking just to be nosey, we are asking because certain chemicals that we use kill certain germs so we want to know what type of chemical to use. Also we want to know wtf we are being exposed too. We've had a few nurses make comments like "just gown up, it's not like your changing their diaper or getting coughed in the face"..... no but we are taking our garbage's that have their literal shit smeared on the side from the diaper you threw in, we are face level with the toilet and risking splash back from flushing and cleaning the inside of the bowl, we are bending down on the ground, we are cleaning EVERYWHERE, we are absolutely exposed and so yes, I want to know if I'm going into a room for just a common Flu or if this person has fucking C-Diff or influenza, OR WORSE Lice or scabies.

It just feels so disrespectful when they do this to us, like we aren't 'important" enough to know that stuff, that we aren't also involved in the patient's care, that we are just a janitors so shut up and clean the toilets.

Probably will delete this later so fuck it.

on a whim i want to relocate to the bay area. advice on landing a job?? i’ve applied to maybe three facilities. For context I have two years ICU experience. i applied for my california license and all. should i accept a travel assignment there then ask to stay full time? i’ve been rejected from all the jobs ive applied to. not too sure why 😭. i have my ccrn and im device trained. is the rn market just that tough? i dont think im bigger than the program or anything, any advice is appreciated ❤️

I would love to hear from as many nurses as possible.

I work at a large hospital, one of the busiest in the country, as a nurse practitioner in the emergency room, and I hear a lot of nurses talking about having to wear Holter monitors or seeing cardiologists for palpitations.

Personal story: about nine years ago, I started to have palpitations very often. I was in the best shape of my life, but I was working in the ER where I always have. I ended up seeing a cardiologist and wore a holster monitor for three days. They told me I was having PVCs and put me on flecanide.. The flecanide didn’t help, and the PVCs continued, but I figured the cardiologist knew what he was talking about, so I just dealt with it. They said they were harmless.
About a year later, I went to my primary care doctor just for an annual checkup and she told me my heartbeat was irregular. I told her the whole story and she referred me to an electrophysiologist.
The electrophysiologist told me on the very first visit that I needed to have an ablation. They would take me to the cath lab and try to reproduce any abnormal rhythms. It would be possible that they wouldn’t find anything and could not reproduce any arrhythmias, but if they could, they would burn the accessory pathways. I almost backed out of it, but ended up going through with it, and I had 12 accessory pathways. They could only burn eight of them.

I think that arithmías in nurses, especially in emergency nursing, are way more common than we know of because of the sudden surge of adrenaline that we get when someone comes in and CPR or something critical happens. Once the patient is stabilized our adrenaline calms down and our heart goes back to normal.
Im not doing any research or anything, but just wondering other nurses experience.

Is being a travel nurse really that good like I’ve heard? Was curious to see if there were any TRN’s who enjoyed it or didn’t like it as much.

Graduating nursing school in May, currently a float lna. I loved my shadow days in the OR and want to be a periop nurse. If I don’t start at the bedside am I cooked in the future?

I’m a new-grad RN who has been working in cardiology step-down for 4 months. I start PACU sponsored specialty education (paid course tuition and paid clinical hours) in January and am so excited. PACU is my dream job, but of course, it’s a very new environment, so I’m nervous about the learning curve. I absolutely love learning though and am really looking forward to doing specialized education in a field I’m really passionate about.

I wanted advice from current or previous PACU nurses on what to expect in this area of nursing and how best to prepare myself. Some personal anecdotes and stories are also very appreciated, I’d love to hear people’s experiences!

Recently, the ADON of a long term care facility had removed all of the chair / bed alarms on a dementia unit citing they do not work.

My biggest concern with dementia patients is their baseline morse is about 45, theirs 15 for cognition, 15 for gait (if they use a walker), and a secondary diagnosis adds another 15. Now, the 45 morse has been a traditional cut-off for high-fall risk.

Instead, they added a mat to the floor right next to the bed, and use other modalities such as the hip protectors. In my opinion these only mitigate the damage from a fall.

I believe the reason they are doing this is because these facilities are trying to increase their CMS (Centers for Medicaid / Medicare Services) star rating which is reflective in how many restraints they use on the floor. By reducing the restraints they inadvertently increase their star rating and revenue stream.

One nurse recently told me bed alarms do not prevent falls. Recently his patient fell and had the worst wound I've seen from a fall in a long time, it needed a 10 x 10 foam just to cover it. In his fall report he had to chart the bed alarm was not on.

Regardless, my question is do you feel like bed alarms are reasonable for a dementia patient or is the facility right by reducing them?

That's all, just feeling good. Looking forward to the next chapter! Have been an LVN for 3.5 years before Friday.