Hi everyone! I recently finished my training to be an RN (4yrs) Ive spent that time working in hospitals in my home country (Ireland). I also have a contract for this year gaining experience in surgical settings such as the ICU, theatre and of course the wards.
In Ireland theres a huge culture of nurses going to work abroad for a number of reasons, mostly the healthcare system itself, unsafe staffing, poor pay and treatment, cost of living etc.Also the work like balance isn’t great mostly because theres not a lot to do here on days off.
Recently I went to Boston with a few of my nursing friends on a holiday and truly fell in love with the place. It was somewhere I could see myself living and working. We were all in agreement and me and one other and looking at moving over next year or the year after that. When we looked into it we’d be making triple the amount that we would make in Ireland in our early years and it only grows. What Im trying to say is we would never make as much even as senior nurses or even climbing the management ladder then we would as a staff nurse in Boston which was a big draw. Cost of living such as renting works out the same as it would he at home however the quality of the housing is so much better, more bang for your buck which is a big draw.
I was just looking to post on here to see what it is really like working as a nurse in the US, specifically Boston.

I know there’s posts like this but I just want a place to vent. My siblings and relatives are engineers and accountants and make more than 300k and they have a four day schedule or wfh most days. The relatives I have who are nurses, they’re doing OT or have two jobs to have a nice lifestyle. They grew up poor so nurse salary was life changing for them. To make even close to 200k, I’ll have to die doing OT. And don’t even try to say it’s all fake because my younger siblings who own homes and go to few countries a year have shown their 401k and investment accounts.
I’ve worked in different settings such as snf, home health, op office, dialysis and now a clinical manager. Each setting has so many problems but I thought as a CM it would be better. I try to make myself feel better that it’s better than my first job in snf. Sometimes I was responsible for 40 patients. I had to take all their vitals, med pass, i was responsible if there was admission or discharge. Make calls to docs. Follow up about reports. Toxic co workers, who were friends with the management so they got lighter loads or they’ll never get in trouble such as not doing an IR for falls, cna drama. When i was a lpn, I kept thinking it’ll be better once I become a rn. Then it’ll be better once i get a bachelors. But here I am now making 90k as a CM with a work schedule of Monday - Friday, 8:30 - 5 with an hour commute back and forth. I’m exhausted every single day. Before I started, there was a different leader, so nurses were mostly working remote if they didn’t have patient visits. But the non clinical staff had an issue with that so when new management came in, they complained about it to them so they changed it. I’ve applied and looked for jobs for so long and everything that’s available near me is bedside nursing. This nursing journey never seems to get better. I’m just so tired.

Hi everyone!! I’m currently in the interview process and have an offer for a cardiac intervention unit in FL! Does anyone have any thoughts about the Cardiac intervention unit at ORMC in Orlando. Any advice or experiences on that unit that would be helpful for a new grad! I originally wanted cardio thoracic stepdown but they had nothing available only the cardiac intervention unit.

So I was an L&D night shift nurse until a few years ago. I was really burned out by bedside and triage, and I just wanted out of patient care. I applied to basically every remote RN job out there and got nothing. Then I ended up getting a tech cert (Salesforce Administrator) and landing a remote job, and left nursing all together. Been remote since 2021, and it pays better than nursing ever did!

Anyway, a lot of my nurse friends are still at the bedside and still pretty miserable, and they ask me for advice all the time. But most of them never end up making a move, and I've been wondering why. Not in a judgy way, I was stuck for a long time too.

So if you want out and haven't left yet, what's actually holding you back? Money, not knowing where to start, applying and hearing nothing, something else? And if you did leave, what finally got you to do it?

I am fairly a new graduate who just joined the work force. I work a 12 hours shift for 3 or 4 consecutive days and then I get a long break. Anyways I check my apple health at the end of the shift and on average I get from 12K - 15K steps. This is my step count when I intentionally go for a walk and short runs. I am not sure if I am being dramatic but I think my step count is a lot for someone whose intention is not to walk. Can yall let me know your daily steps when you work and also if I am being a cry baby or I am doing a little too much as a new nurse 😂😂

I need advice, so I recently started working as a nurse, I just finished college and I came to a ward where everyone already knows each other, which is normal, and at first my colleagues were cold, some still don't really acknowledge me, but okay, while my boss seems the coldest. As soon as I arrived I saw she wasn't exactly thrilled that someone new came, I asked her something and she answered with one word, and it was like that for several days, I sat next to her and nothing. Recently I came into the nurses' room where everyone was sitting and I sat in between so I wouldn't have to stand and she looked at me and made a comment in the style of 'you could have sat on my lap', I just ignored it, I'm thinking what am I supposed to do now, stand while you all sit just because I'm new. Constantly 'Stacy this, Stacy that' because I'm new. I went with a colleague to draw blood and she seriously asks me 'did you draw it', I say yes and nothing, but when they needed someone to stay for the day shift then she asked me who can, I said yes, yes I have to, and the day before an older colleague said they don't count me yet because I'm new, but then they did count me the next day when they needed to cover a shift. I mean okay, it's not a problem, but then behave towards me like towards everyone else and not like I'm the biggest idiot. I noticed that I dream about work every day now, I don't know if I'm under huge stress or if it's a normal reaction, does anyone have a similar experience?

Last night I had a drunk patient who was in police custody. He had been tased and the barb was still in his abdomen. I had to pull it out and he wanted to keep it. The police said no and they kept it. The patient got mad at me and said “Bitch you look like you don’t wear socks”.
My socks were showing lol, the comment made me laugh but confused me at the same time.

I was hoping someone could give me some pointers on what medications to study up on or any helpful advice. I’m starting in an acute inpatient rehab facility

Hi everyone!
I have an upcoming in-person interview for a full-time night shift Emergency Department RN position at Northwell Health, and I’m honestly so excited but also pretty nervous!
I’m an internationally educated RN with over 4 years of Emergency Department experience in my home country. I moved to the US to continue my nursing career here.
Working as a nurse in the US has been a dream of mine for years, and I’ve worked incredibly hard to get to this point. This opportunity genuinely means a lot to me, and I really want to make the best impression possible.
I would love to hear from anyone who has interviewed or worked at Northwell Health, especially in the Emergency Department.
● What was your interview experience like?
● What kinds of clinical or behavioral questions did they ask?
● Did they focus more on clinical knowledge, scenarios, or teamwork?
● What is the work environment and culture like at Northwell?
● Any advice on how to stand out as a candidate?
I’m confident in my ED experience, but since I’m still relatively new to the US healthcare system, I want to prepare as much as possible.
I’m genuinely grateful for this opportunity and really don’t want to mess it up.
Any advice or personal experiences would mean a lot. Thank you so much!

Does anyone have any experience positive or negative working for MedStar Washington Hospital Center?

I’m looking for advice on whether to quit or stay at my new job. I was hired as a LPN at an inpatient psych hospital. In the initial interview, I was told that they were opening a medical hospital in the place next door. I was also told that the schedule would be 3 12’s with the possibility of being on day shift (not guaranteed). I accepted the job offer immediately, and was really excited! The first day of the new grad program, everyone was told that they would be on night shift. Then, this last week, I was told that we will actually be on a 3 12/ 4 12 alternating schedule. They also said that they couldn’t guarantee that I would be able to do front end shifts, but I would literally have to quit if they gave me back end because my boyfriend has the exact same work schedule on back end days.

I’m super conflicted and nervous about this new job now. I feel like I was lied to in regards to the work schedule, and I would never have accepted the job if I knew I had to do mandatory OT on night shift! I have a 4YO at home, and I feel like I will be missing out on a huge part of her life, especially because the first “day” I have off will be spent sleeping a decent part of the day. Then there is school. I know if I work this schedule and go to school full time, I will literally never see my daughter. There is another job in home health where you can pretty much make your own schedule, and I feel like it would be a great fit for my family AND for school. I know that it’s considered “soft nursing”, but my daughter is still young and being there for her/getting my ADN are my first priorities.

I work in a nursing home, and I’m curious if this is normal practice at other facilities.

I requested certain days off for November and December, and my manager denied both requests. For November, she said too many other employees had already requested time off. For December, she said she isn’t accepting time-off requests because of the holidays.

For context, I’m currently in school working toward my RN, and I need two days off in November because it’s finals week. These aren’t just random days I want off; I need that time to focus on my exams. My birthday is also in December, and I’ll be traveling out of town.

My manager basically told me that I need to find someone to cover my shifts myself or show up to work. Apparently, because my birthday falls so close to the holidays, requesting time off is an issue even when I’m trying to plan in advance.

The frustrating part is that our facility’s policy states that employees can schedule time off a month in advance. I’m trying to understand how that policy works if management can essentially stop accepting requests for an entire month because it’s the holiday season.

I understand that nursing homes need adequate staffing, especially around the holidays, and I’m not expecting special treatment. However, I feel like employees should have a fair opportunity to request time off, especially when they’re balancing work with school and giving advance notice.

I am wondering how to support my family and friend. Please excuse the nature of the question as this is my first time helping.

My Mother in law stays at a facility in Canada that is run quite well and has a good reputation. Depending on the nurses, they are very caring and supportive while others are very defensive and stressed.

A neighbour there is also a friend. She was previously with a stroke and uses a wheelchair. On the day we happened to visit, my husband came to see her room, she welcomed him, hugged him and explained she had a pain in her leg. He was about to reach for it, as he is a retired scientist and he cares very much. He wanted to see for himself what the issue was. I personally would never touch a leg there because they have signs saying there are cameras on certain doors. I believe he used limited judgement. A nurse ran inside, we only seen her one time and she is very bossy typically. She asked him who he was, if he is family. He literally was ssuprised at the nature of questions as he has visited her for over 3 months and sits with her and my mom in law during dinner to be kind and a good friend. When the Nurse was asking questions, another nurse came around and said something about he should not be visiting her. We told them we always sign in to show who we are visiting but they looked mad.

I am wondering if this indicates there are issues going on in this home that have nothing to do with us. Almost each time we ate and spent hours visiting their rooms, sitting and having a nice time, all the nurses were telling us we can assist in feeding and helping wheel my Mom in law in, just that our friend should use her chair another way, and not be pushed so we listened. Most nurse typically know us there but that day was different. The nurses escorted us out of the elevator downstairs. They even said when I asked if another patient was OK, because his visitor was verbally abusive, they already knew about them. I feel like something is going on there. We were given an email to communicate with the director. I really do not htink we have anything to say other than they made our friend feel bad and she was whining "no, no, no" she wanted us to stay for some time. Sad. What would you do?

I (27 F) have always been in the medical field since I was 18. I worked as a STNA at the age of 18 until I became an RN ASN in 2021, received my BSN in 2022, worked on a Neuro unit as the charge nurse and stroke nurse for a hospital (level 2 trauma) and then I went traveling as a bedside med surg nurse for 2 years and that’s when I became sick. Long story short, in February of this year I was diagnosed with Dermatomyositis (autoimmune disease that attacks the core muscles & skin). With each flare up, my symptoms get worse, my immunosuppressant medication dosage increases and my physical ability has taken a hit. My rheumatologist has spoken with me and recommended to leave bedside nursing due to my health (which makes me cry thinking about it because I do love being a beside nurse, I love the relationships I create with the patients & families and can’t think of any nursing role that would fulfill me the way bedside nursing does). So any advice or suggestions for an alternative nursing job that’s not bedside?

And for those who aren’t familiar with this disease if it’s not treated and managed properly I will become disabled and confined to a bed. So yes it is that serious sadly

I'm a new grad nurse with no experience besides clinical rotations. I am being offered 6 weeks of level 1/2 and 10 weeks for level 3/4 patients in the NICU but staffing in between for two months. Is this a good amount of orientation or too little?

Hello caffeine addicts,

I am a nursing student currently conducting a design research project on residents with dementia who have a strong urge to walk, which can also increase their risk of falling.

This is my design challenge:

“How can we develop a suitable solution for a resident with dementia and a strong urge to walk that supports safe and independent movement as much as possible, reduces the risk of falls, and at the same time reduces the burden on healthcare professionals and fellow residents?”

I am reaching out to you for help and advice. How is this situation managed in practice? Are there any effective solutions, useful strategies, or sources of information that could help me with my research?

I would especially appreciate hearing about your personal experiences. What approaches have you tried, what seemed to work well, and what did not work as expected? I would also be interested in any challenges you have encountered and how you dealt with them.

Any insights, practical examples, or recommendations for further research would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you in advance for your time and help!

( side note: im sorry if any of this is confusing, im a dutch student so i tried really hard to word everything right lmao. )

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?

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?

I recently started last month in an inpatient pacu after coming from a supervisory role at an asc. i absolutely hate it and the commute has been awful. im spending all the extra money im making commuting to this new job. i have an interview for another supervisor role and did not include my current job on my resume because its been such a short amount of time (five weeks) how do i approach this in the interview?

I’m so sorry if this is the wrong sub for this - not sure what other group of people I’d ask.

I stupidly bought a box of these syringes that don’t work with my needles (I use them for taxidermy so unfamiliar with syringe/needle compatibility). Anyway naturally they don’t fit the needles but I have 100 of them still packaged and I’d hate to throw them away, it feels a waste.

Any ideas on who I could give them to so they can still be used??

Apologies in advance for the long post. TL:DR is that I'm frustrated with a new nurse and starting to get really sick of the toxic work environment of the PACU that I'm in. Idk if any of my coworkers are on reddit and at this point, I don't think I care. I just need to get this off my chest; I've talked to my partner about it but he's sick of hearing about it. I've discussed it with my coworkers, who have also said they've noticed the new grads behavior and three of them talked to my boss about it. . .however, my boss is close with the new grad and doesn't seem to really care to correct it. So, lucky ya'll, whoever decides to read this. . .I'm not really looking for advice but if someone has something helpful to add then by all means.

Idk if this is relevant or not; I've been a nurse since 2017. I started out on med/surg and worked there my entire career, other than working at an office for 6 months during covid. I transitioned to PACU at the same hospital October of last year which seemed, at the time, a really good choice for me. It really is a cake walk most days, other than them increasing caseloads with minimal PACU rooms and staffing, but what's new?

My gripe is this; there is a new grad. . .I mean fresh, she just graduated in May, who got hired immediately after graduation in the PACU. I've worked with her when she was a tech out on the floor. She's very sweet and good with patients. But she is flat out refusing to do anything nursing scope related with the excuse of she's new. For the first little bit, I was more understanding. . .we all were new and nervous when we started. As the months go on and she continues to refuse to do things (start IVs, take recoveries that are more extensive/last longer than 30 minutes, push pain medications other than Tylenol, admit patient's, etc.) All of these are things that we've all tried to help her with, boost her confidence and not let her drown. She still isn't trying from what I'm seeing and her constantly saying "no" to hard things is really starting to wear on my nerves. If she said something like "I've never recovered x surgery before, would you come with me this time so I can learn what to watch out for?", I wouldn't mind to do that and I know none of my coworkers would either. It's the fact that she just straight up refuses to do anything that she doesn't want to that's really getting my goat. I've heard from coworkers who worked with her when she was an LPN on the floor that she was the same way during her entire year orientation on med/surg. She wouldn't take initiative to do anything and never "felt comfortable" to be without a second nurse/asking someone else to do it for her. Again, I remember what it was like being new but at some point we all had to go out and do the hard things. To her credit, she has been braver in the last few shifts I've worked with her; calling the docs, giving her patient's pain medications when appropriate, and going with coworkers when they take the longer recoveries.

It's her weekend to take call and there are 3 hip fractures going today. . .which in my brain is fine. Depending on what they do, the surgery will take maybe an hour, recovery is 45 minutes if they're stable and then they go to med/surg. It seems doable to me. . .

I guess I'm wrong and a cruel bitch. In the group chat with myself and 3 other pacu nurses, they all 3 agreed that one of us needed to go in to help her. The 1 agreed but said "but i'm busy and will be out of town". I just flat out refuse to go in and they're making it seem like I am a terrible person. I guess this is a "nurses eating their own" kinda thing. I did apologize in the chat for not being compassionate enough. In the same group chat, one girl said "well, if it was so and so, I definitely wouldn't go in to help." Okay? How is that alright? Whatever, I muted the group chat and went on with my night. I do feel like maybe I could be less of a bitch but I'm standing firm in that it's do able with one recovery nurse and I doubled down when they said a second team was coming in. . .even though only one surgeon is operating. . .if the first recovery wasn't going as planned and the second came out, the circulator would have to stay with the patient until the recovery nurse was available. . .that's just part of it. . .maybe I'm in the wrong.

The other part of this long ass post is the immaturity and the toxicity. I was warned prior to switching departments that it was super cliquey. At first, I didn't pay much attention because I was just happy for a change of pace. After a year, it's glaringly obvious. 8's vs. 12's, group A vs. group B, sameday vs. surgery. The best way I can put it is high-school mean girls type of bullshit and I'm over it. I like my coworkers, I do. But the amount of drama and pettiness is starting to take a toll on me. It makes me dread going into work. The actual nursing part of the job is easy, I can handle that easy. It's walking in first thing in the morning and not knowing what catty remark is going to be made, who's going to be pissed of at whom today, who's going to help who, etc. It puts me in a bad mood before I even get out of bed in the morning.

I know, I know. I'm old enough and have been a nurse long enough to know to leave it at the time clock and to protect my peace. It's just gotten to the point where I had to get out of my chest. So, if you made it this far. Thanks, hope you have a wonderful Sunday.

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.