I know what caused me to leave the acute hospital 10+ years ago.
I moved out of the area and was commuting a crazy distance to a hospital and I was just waiting for a reason to leave.. I got it when I had a conversation with my manager and then my annual evaluation. The first incident had no bearing on my merit raise fyi. ** I was written up due to the fact that we had a patient crash on our medical unit and needed to be transferred to ICU. I document only 5 attempts at calling the MD for this patient... god knows I called 10+ but to no avail. Our house supervisor made the decision to move the patient. When the MD arrived to the unit.. he said I never called.. and he insisted I get written up for bad patient care... My boss said this, I know you did the right thing, but Dr. Ross feels you did'nt do you job and he is the medical director!
** Noelle, you are a wonderful employee... you hold certifications in all units ortho, oncology, well baby nursery, and post partum.. You have had no reported med errors this past year. We appreciate you and wish you would consider the charge nurse position. ( it only paid $20 extra a shift.. and had double the responsibility! )
Your merit increase is .32 cents! ( that was in 1997) I immediately on site gave a 2 weeks notice.... I know what you are talking about. I left nursing 10 years ago also. I was burned out. I was the charge nurse on a 60 bed geriatric unit. It was just me and two NA's on the night shift. I got no time with the patients,all I did was paperwork. If I wanted to do paperwork I would have been in business,not nursing. One supervisor hated me for some reason and started telling outright lies about me,she once said I refused to give a pain med to someone and told her to do it herself,which she said she did. Funny she never asked for the keys to the med cart or signed the med sheet that she gave it,but they believed her over me.
Dealing with staff that are out to get you,long hours,forced overtime,lots of stress. Seems like everyone is out to sue. I enjoyed nursing,I wanted to be a nurse from the time I was little. After I thought about it,having the responsibility of 60 people's lives,along with all the other BS that went along with it,I needed a change. For all that I got paid a whopping $14.00 an hour. I still have my license but doubt I'll ever use it again. the average new public school teacher lasts 5 years.
the average for new special education teacher makes it 7 years.
***
Bureaucracies are almost always the worst ways to run anything.
so, please tell me again why people want HillaryCare? Having been a patient in a hospital, I am very appreciative of the nurses do.
But my impression is that they a treated poorly, made to work too many hours, peeed upon by the doctors and always available when someone is needed to take the fall. It's a terrible shame.
For those good nurses out there, I am very grateful for the care they gave me. No doctor ever came when I pressed that button. Nurses are unsung heroines and heros. They are ever being mis-appropriated -- that is the apt term...
Feel no guilt or enmity and in fact, use your knowledge to create something in the health care arena, something insightful and creative; something that none but a nurse could conceive of since none others would quite know the questions as would a nurse who has the full dimensional experience with life and death and the implications unseen and unheard.
I once worked at Univ of Ca San Francisco Medical Center/School as an auditor in which I had to do rounds and review medical charts, and did observe what champions the nurses truly are and what they underwent daily -- phenomenal.
I do risk bias here to say that the nursing profession is still dominated by women, and perhaps until men come into this profession, we may continue to see this pattern of what nurses face, which is sad for so highly a skilled and needed profession.
But I will add here. Some things simply don't follow: thus we cannot allow innate imbalances to dictate how we carry in life, for which the result is in turn an unbalanced result.
That is, the work ethic in this country for many today is simply crazy -- commuting long stretches is simply health-prohibitive. In this case, one must use the principles and light one has and apply this to some vocation till one can avail oneself of having the profession truly wished -- in your case, maybe this is still nursing. We must not resolve to a corruption of ourselves, regardless of this poppycock stuff called the work ethic. Dogmatism can go only but so far.
I am convinced that you will not allow corruption of yourself because of some jackass doctors or managers. That you left is what you should have done. These people had forgotten what they were trained and hired to do: facilitate health; heal the patient; do no harm.
You did well. So don't sweat it or regret it.
Things will change in this country. Of that I am convinced.
But for now there exists still the many lights unseen and sounds unheard... |
