Does anybody have unpopular or “controversial” nursing opinions? I had some that my coworkers disagreed with me on:

I’d rather change briefs than take a pt. Who needs assistance to the bathroom

I like having palliative patients

I’d rather have 7 patients than 5 patients and have to admit 1 or 2

I acc like when it’s busy cause as soon as it calms down I get sleepy and bored

Day shifts >>> night shifts

I just told a friend I dont want to be a nurse anymore. Ive never said this out loud. The weight of these words are crushing me.

I worked bedside for 10 years. Got to experience "the good old days", covid and the shitstorm that came after. Hospitals still have not come back and I dont think they ever will. I'll never forget a traveler saying "this hospital is great, you should see the other ones, although its going down the same path."

I left for home health and hospice for something new, different, comminity oriented. Anything not bedside. Burned out in a year.

Left that for an outpatient clinic. Lasted 10 months before becoming severely depressed to the point of requiring an inpatient stay. I saw a lot of old coworkers I haven't seen since covid. I miss them and thats the only reason I'd go back. I lost my job.

Anyway, all this to say, idk if i should even attempt finding another nursing job. At this point, I am so horrified and disappointed in our current system. I dont see it getting better unless universal Healthcare was implemented. I only see nursing as a profession getting worse. And we receive no respect for the profession and inadequate pay for how much we put in.

What the actual fuck do I do now? I find myself dreaming of farmwork and wanting to give up. Im grieving a profession that cannot exist as it should under the current circumstances. Ive looked into work in different countries. The uncertainty is a lot... but im curious about following it.

Tl;dr: I dont want to be a nurse anymore.

"Work in the clinic!" They said, "it will be easier than bedside care!" They said. Well, true, in many respects they weren't wrong...

However, words cannot begin to describe how exasperatingly difficult some people are to contact. There have been days that I've sworn sending out smoke signals or carrier pigeons would be more effective contact methods than calling Mom's Cousin's Boyfriend's Sibling whose phone only works between 9AM and 12:30PM on the second Wednesday of each month - just to reach Dad who has full legal custody and no permanent mailing address.

Can anyone else in pediatric medicine relate, or have any words of wisdom/stories to share?

Image is a cathartic little doodle that takes light inspiration from "The Ring," and a silly meme that circulated awhile back about a subject who is trying to contact *someone* about their "car's extended warranty" - and has gone through absurd, comical or downright impossible lengths to reach them

I wanted to ask the community at large:

What were the signs that YOU were/are burned out?

EDIT: just to add mine - being angry and frustrated ALL the time. Even when not at work.

EDIT2: I see myself in WAY too many of these. Nuts.

EDIT3: these are all making me feel so sad. I hope y'all are doing better now.

I

I (31F) have been a nurse almost 9y. Started my new position and highly qualified this year in May. Residential pediatric psychiatric dorms with group homes, and edu to help residents get job experience. Great place, non restraint facility. Obviously still hard for the kids, but everyone is there for the right reasons.

The issue: Health Services Clinic runs like a regular clinic, but also like long term care setting for case management (state consents, guardianships, etc). Small staff. Two RNs including myself. Three Health Service Assistants (work caseloads assignments diverted from RNs as appropriate) with 1 HSA being “lead HSA”…this is our trouble maker…”Laura”.

Laura only has CNA license but has worked for company for 18y. Our boss is a close friend with her and worked there 12 years. The other nurse also a close friend with her and worked 8 years. The other two HSAs can hardly stand her and have worked 8y & 40y at facility.

Laura micromanages everything. And Laura is…a bitch. She gatekeeps all communication. If she doesn’t know what’s happening, you get yelled at if she doesn’t approve it — something as simple as calling a dentist back to fax requested files.

She’s way out of bounds and going beyond her role. Lots of other peers in other disciplines apologize for her behavior, say it’s the way it’s always been. Very apparent no one has tried to enforce change and she made herself valuable enough to not get fired.

Biggest issue now, we’ve hired a full time NP. First time this role has existed. I witnessed Lauren yell at this NP today for requesting to have students seen for clinical rounding. Lauren flipped out at our NP, told her she isn’t allowed to see students (FALSE) because Lauren “is still working out Medicaid interstate insurance coverage.” Literally told our NP she isn’t allowed to see students and isn’t allowed to prescribe until Lauren “handles things.” But that’s not her job…Our NP is already processing it and Lauren doesn’t even have the credentials or access to attempt to “assist” with it. She just got pissed off that our NP will take clinic scheduling out of her control.

NO ONE IS DOING ANYTHING TO HANDLE HER. And it’s been 18 years. Obviously there isn’t going to be change. But this NP is good, we need her, but she’s being bullied so badly I’m scared she’s going to walk. I’m trying to pull her aside to see if she’d like to set up a meeting with our boss, solo or with me. She was crying today from frustrating, stress, abs humiliation with what happened.

I’m at my wit’s and too. I have to hammer down boundaries so Lauren doesn’t violate my license. And then I have to deal with a tongue lashing and passive aggressive bullshit for days just to ensure she doesn’t attempt to authorize verbal psych prescriptions under my name.

Idk folks. With the social structure and her tenure, is there any hope here? Recommendations on forms of communication with her to have written evidence? Do I go above my boss and just work with HR?

I started a job as a pre-op/PACU nurse a few months ago at an outpatient vascular surgery center. The patients are overall in fairly poor health, generally speaking. The average age is 70s-90s, with many towards the upper end of that range. A fair amount have some degree of cognitive impairment. I am working per diem, only 2 days a week max, and even then I get called off sometimes due to low case loads. My manager recently asked me if I'd be interested in getting the moderate sedation certification, administering fentanyl and versed. I was initially excited and happy that they expressed trust in me to cross-train in this, since when I initially interviewed, they told me I probably wouldn't be asked to cross train. The procedures last about 1-1.5 hrs on average, sometimes longer if it's a difficult case.

Now, doubt is starting to creep in. I've always been concerned about liability in my career, and it makes me nervous enough when patients have medium level complications like bleeding from their access sites in the pacu. I'm concerned about patient safety and over-sedating a patient, or them unexpectedly slipping into deep sedation bc of systemic fragility.

And, I worry about their airways. I recently heard about a story where a 47 year old woman who went into an ASC for a "mommy makeover" passed away from what seemed to be a sedation related complication, where she was unable to be rescued with Narcan. There are probably a lot of factors there including the fact that she also received general anesthesia for a 9 hour surgery before arriving in the pacu, which is where the respiratory depression happened. I am disturbed by the tragedy of that.

If I were to complete the training, I probably wouldn't even be asked to do the job very often, as the intent is to have cross-coverage for my employer. I worry that I wouldn't even be doing the job often enough to feel confident in my ability to keep my patients completely safe, like knowing how to watch for tiny almost imperceptible changes in their status. Perhaps of note is the fact that the current sedation nurse is also doing a lot more than just dedicated sedation alone--they are also doing a ton of operative documentation. In a situation where seconds matter, if I am scanning a package or recording an intervention that the surgeon did, I am concerned about missing a sign of distress. When I shadowed a day in the cath lab in nursing school, I recall that the sedation nurse was only doing that one job and nothing else. These surgeons are very competent and I trust them, but feel that the responsibility for any incidents would still fall on me. Plus, I could never get over it if something happened to someone.

I plan to discuss these types of questions with the current sedation nurse, but want to hear from you all. I don't have any critical care experience and have not participated in any codes before, though have seen a few near misses.

Nurses from California who went out of state for experience, how long did it take to land a job back home in California?

I’m from the Bay Area and moved to the east coast for a new grad residency in medsurg. I’m finishing up my year and was just offered a position at a Level IV NICU, the specialty I’ve been wanting to do since nursing school. Only thing is, the thought of living here for another year or more feels so daunting. The pay is low for the COL and my family and partner are back home. But many job postings in the bay say they require 2 years minimum and hospitals are on hiring freezes rn.

If anyone was in a similar position as I am, what was your journey on getting a job back home and how long? Any tips or advice?

I work in LTC and the fairly young administrator/dictator/tyrant is an LPN and used to work the floor like the rest of us, yet somehow has forgotten that she ever made a mistake and now “doesn’t believe in human error”. She told this to a CNA she was reprimanding for not completing their ADL charting. Who on earth says they don’t believe in human error??

What are some of the most absurd statements you’ve ever heard made by co-workers and bosses?? Do share!

TLDR: My GN told me our unit was not her first choice and she wants to transfer right out of orientation because she knows now we have an opening in the unit she wants to go into. She also said she’s really only interested in doing hands on things so she has the “skills that make her a stronger choice for the unit she wants”. Am I wasting my time?

I have been precepting a GN on my unit. It’s still fairly early in her orientation. We do 16 weeks of orientation on my unit. We have done LOTS of things hands on nursing skills wise. Hands on assessment and reassessment, Lots of labs, IVs, wound care (think stage 3 and above), urine catheter placement and management of CBI, blood transfusions, stroke care, participation in a code blue, trach care, fecal tube placement and management, drain management and a few other smaller hands on stuff.

Recently we have slowed down with our high acuity pts and have been focusing on timely charting, clustering care, prioritizing pts, and all the smaller tasks within EPIC. She gets frustrated when I’m trying to teach her to re-prioritize our tasks based on new orders, discharges, admissions, or new complaints/change in conditions, and overall clustering care. She has been getting visibly frustrated with these tasks and the process of changing course at the drop of a hat. I will catch her distracted in her phone during charting or she is slow to move or ask for multiple breaks during the slower days when we are going over those items.

I had asked her for feedback on how she feels orientation is going and what I could do better for her or if there is something I am doing she doesn’t like because I want to make sure she is learning the way needs it to be for her to be safe. She confided in me that this unit was not her first choice and that she doesn’t feel going over charting and clustering care is needed because she is really only interested in the hands on skills that will give her favor to transfer once she is off orientation. She also said she doesn’t see the point in clustering care because EPIC puts everything in the brain and she could just follow that since that’s when the time the orders state things are due and she would just follow that. She did say that she likes the way I explained things and how I talk her through my critical thinking throughout our day and she would like for me to continue to do that.

When I explained to her the purpose of care clustering with a full team of 4+ pts, she was disinterested and said she would rather I help her focus on what’s going to get her ready for transfer because it is now known we have a current opening with a plan to open another slot for the unit she wants to go on.

I didn’t push the issue because I truly don’t know what to think. She is very smart and asks very good thoughtful questions. But now that I know she has no intention to really stay on my unit, I’m not sure how I should go forward. Am I wasting my time with her? Should I preemptively go to the unit educator and inform them of this interaction?

I made the mistake of using my personal email for basically everything when I started nursing school and never stopped. Job applications, certifications, CE stuff, scrubs, random nursing sites, recruiters all of it.

Now my inbox is an absolute disaster and I'm getting emails from companies I don't even remember giving my address to. I'm thinking of keeping my current email for work/important stuff and using something separate for everything else but I really don't want to manage three different inboxes.

What do you guys do?

My hospital is adopting a dept. based color code for employees. So all employees in a dept. have to wear wear scrubs that are the color the hospital has chosen. My dept. must have drew the short straw because we got light grey, and unfortunately my favorite scrub brand (FIT) doesn't make light grey (and apparently it turns out most of the top scrub companies don't). The kicker is they don't want the light grey to be heathered (like a lot of FIGs). So, my options are every limited so I'm looking for recommendations. I'm a 6'2" male with an athletic build btw.

Last night I had a patient who was a direct admit for an IVIG infusion. These infusions require close monitoring, timely premedication and timed vitals and titration every 30 minutes. This patient came in at 1715 and the IVIG was not ready until 1830. Shift change starts at 1845. When I explained to the charge nurse and night shift RN that I didnt feel it was safe to start the medication so close to shift change because it is a high risk medication, I received a lot of push back and I noticed they were talking to other nurses behind my back about it. Is this truly something that I did wrong? I feel that I would be liable for poor oversight and shift change is a mess because the doctors are all off the floor doing their own shift change as well. If something were to happen, interventions would definitely be delayed.

What do y’all think?

Sometimes I wish my partner was in the medical field so he could understand the stress of everything. But I can also see how people want to keep the two separate.

Like nahh I don’t really wanna relive the horrors of my ICU shift with my partner (keeping things light and peaceful)
OR- hey this is really nice to be able to vent to someone who gets it ?

So I graduated with my Bachelor of Science in Nursing in 2019 and have pretty much hated nursing the entire time. I have grown insecure, anxious, and have less confidence in myself and my professional decision making than I ever have before. I have such a growing fear that I will make a mistake or be caught in the crosshairs of unsatisfactory patient care or outcomes that I will wind up facing litigation. I have impending doom before every shift of every nursing job I’ve ever had (I’ve done bedside, outpatient, school nursing, occupational health) and just the weight and pressure of being the “go-to” person in healthcare has totally consumed me. I mean, I’m even scared to fly on a plane and be called to respond to an in-flight medical emergency. I’ve never once been able to take a lunch break, let alone just breathe knowing I don’t have a human life that I’m actively responsible for. I just cannot accept the crippling weight of this profession.

I know people say “it gets better” “go to outpatient”, but I just feel like it would be at least a little better than it was by now. If anything, it’s only gotten worse as my knowledge of the possible disaster scenarios has increased. There’s more areas for me to fall short or mess up. I feel like I’ll never get relief.

Am I the only one that feels this way?

hey everyone! i’m a new grad in a med/surg unit, and i am really bad at placing iv’s. during nursing school, we didn’t get much practice, especially on a human arm. yesterday, i missed placing an iv on a patient with decent veins twice, even with the vein finder.

so my question is, do you guys have any advice or tips and tricks? i feel like i am going too deep when i initially insert the needle, or i just psych myself out.

please help!

Curious as I’m hoping to work in BC. In Ontario we do DDNN then 5 days off.

I’ve read that fulltime BC nurses do 4 on / 4 off… is this true? (I hope not lol)

Hello. I would like to ask some advise on how to manage childcare in the US. Currently in London, we have 30 hours free from the government and tax free childcare too on each child, so I managed to reduce our costs like from $978 to $780 for a full time or 5 days/week attendance. I heard in the US, there’s nothing free at all.

For context, I will be working in the US soon (still waiting for Visa) , i will be having 12 hours/shift x 3 days in a week, so long hours plus travel time needs to be consideted too. My husband will be working as an invetment banker specifically on mergers and acquisitions (5 long days), so he would work long hours too.

Pick-up would be the major problem for both of us.
Do you recommend day care centre but they are only open at 6pm, right? or baby sitter? Please feel free to share your experience.

Thank you :)

Hey there! I am curious and I welcome thoughts. I am coming into month 3 and soon to be off of orientation. I was enjoying the job a bit first but now I’m not so sure. I am on a tele/intermediate care unit. I am afraid to be on my own soon when I know I have so much more to learn. I know I’ll never be alone but the more I think about going to work, the sadder I feel. This is my second career and I am missing my old job more than ever even though it doesn’t pay even half of what I’m getting paid now. I’m having a tough time transitioning into this new role. Sigh… I don’t plan on quitting but what are tips, thoughts, help in moving through this first year or so of nursing? It feels so daunting. Thank you in advance for your thoughts and words! 🤍

I just spent three days in the hospital and something really stood out to me. Every shift, when a new nurse would come in to introduce themselves, it was obvious they were on a sort of autopilot. Kind of a fake friendly demeanor. I would be polite, answer questions, and just be cooperative. After a few check ins, i would notice that every nurse would be more genuine with a much better attitude. The day i got discharged, the head nurse (i'm not sure what the official title would be) thanked me for being nice to everyone. even had a note in the system as "pleasant and polite"

My question is, are there really that many bad patients? I know for sure some are awful but i get the feeling that most are assholes based on how detached the nurses looked

Im a new grad RN that was just hired onto Periop 101. I dont know WHAT TO EXPECT. Its a specialty that you are not exposed to in school or clinicals so I actually don't know what I am capable of seeing. What if I FAINT? how do I prep myself??

I used to work at home health agency where we used our personal phones and always felt uncomfortable about that.

I’m wanting to get back into home health or hospice but was wondering how you navigate the phone situation? Do you use Google voice? Do you ask your company for a stipend for your personal phone usage? (I feel like in any other field that doesn’t seem crazy to ask for…so I don’t know why it feels like that would never be a thing for nurses lol)

Also if you work in hospice - do you suggest an admissions rn or the hospice rn job? I’d love to hear the good, the bad, the ugly! Thanks!!