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Huh?
You must not be a bedside nurse to write that! Notice that the people who write positive things about nursing are mainly students of nursing, new nurses, or nurses who do not work at the bedside. Notice also that many of the people whose posts are hostile toward nurses who want to leave bedside nursing do not state that they are bedside nurses (only one who does this for a living knows the nightmare that is modern nursing) and if they are bedside nurses it gives a perfect example of how one is treated by co-workers in the nursing field. I have been an RN for over ten years and the working conditions are practically third world, the low to average pay looks good to someone who scratches out a living but is NOT worth the agony of the job. I have worked in several hospitals throughout the US and in many types of settings. I am verbally abused on a daily basis from the housekeepers to the supervisors. I am physically abused by patients on a weekly basis. I have been threatened countless times by patients and family members due to no fault of mine I assure you. I rarely get breaks or lunches during my 12 1/2 - 13 hour shifts. I MIGHT get to go to the bathroom once a shift if I'm lucky and there isn't time to drink fluids so usually I don't urinate on myself. The paperwork, subsequent data entry, quadruple charting is astronomical to the point that there are too many shifts where I spend maybe an hour total with each of my two to three critical care patients per shift. The hospitals I work at now sometimes runs out of emergency drugs and has run out of endotracheal tube trays on more than one occasion, there is little qualified staff available, the soap and paper towel dispensers are frequently empty, clean linen is minimal, the dirty utility room has dirty linen stinking to the ceiling and falling on the floor. The garbage cans are spilling onto the floor. As a nurse I come on shift and recieve a sketchy report, stock my rooms with gloves, empty the garbage in my rooms and put it on the piles of trash spilling all over the floor of the dirty utility room, I answer the phone and transfer calls etc frequently because the hospital feels it is appropriate to staff one unit clerk for four critical care units in a traum center. I fax and enter mine and others orders because the unit clerk is slammed and mad that she's being abused like that. I check my med drawers to find that many of the meds have not been delivered, I fill out order sheets, fax them, give report to another slammed RN and go to the pharmacy to get the shifts meds for my patients. I check my careplans to see what supplies I need and usually order many of them from SPD as the hospital runs most departments on a skeleton crew. I go to SPD to get the items. I must operate the security doors in the trauma unit to allow visitors and doctors in as many doctors don't wear their badges to let them in. I must stuff my charts so orders can be written. I must find time to enter my patients rooms to pick up the garbage from the floor, clean the body fluids from the IV pumps and monitors, turn the monitor alarms back on as they are turned off much of the time, I must then fight a sea of visitors who take up residence in the rooms to try to see my patients. Once I get near the patient I must do a head to toe exam, change the tubing/equipment and label it, run EKG, A-line, CVP, ICP strips, post them and analyze them. I must give my 2-3 patients a full bath and linen change (usually by myself) because the hospital feels it is appropriate to staff several units with one or two techs for about 24 RN's and level 1 trauma patients. I must correct all problems with the patient and the patient's family. I must turn my patients (who are usually 250 to 600 pounds each) at least every two hours and do oral care at least every two hours. I must write down VS as often as every 5 minutes and subsequently chart it in the computer as well as in the nurses notes and other VS flowsheets. I must release my patient's wrist restraints ( to stop them from pulling out the life saving lines/tubes) every hour and do ROM and don't forget to chart that in the nurses notes, computer and other flowsheets. What I have reported here is about 5% of what I must do over the course of my shift! I must mix my own critical care infusions, check the crash cart, do the controls on the BGM, pass out meal trays three times a day (if they can eat), feed patients, clean up, chart all that too! Now we've reached about 7% of what I do in a shift...is anyone starting to see that we nurses have 2,457,000 things to do a shift and make sure there are no mistakes?! Meanwhile we are abused by staff, patients, family members, doctors, callers on the phone. The stress is off the chart. At first when I started this job I was only affected mentally and that didn't start until I was a nurse for about 2 years. After 7 years as a nurse I developed hypertension, breaking out in rashes while at work, insomnia, diarrhea alternating with constipation (depending on if I was able to eat or drink that shift), chest pain, shortness of breath. I could write about the horrors for hours and the sad thing is that the powers that be are well aware of all of this and they do not care about anything but making money however they project an image of caring while continueing to promote the nursing shortage. Want to get rid of the nursing "shortage"? Double all nurse's salary, give us a decent benefit package, pay us double time for holidays, time and a half for over 36 hours a week. Let us make our schedules-we will be fair. Give monetary incentives to work weekends and nights. It should not be mandatory to work rotating shifts, weekends and holidays. If you compensate for those shifts you will have more than enough nurses to work nights, weekends, and holidays.
No more than 2 patients in critical care, no more than 4 patients in telemetry, no more than 6 patients on the floor, always have at least one unit clerk per unit and at least one tech and one CNA per unit, hire staff to stock and deliver supplies, meds etc so that nurses don't have to stop, write, fax, go get these things multiple times a shift. LET US HAVE BREAKS!!! Give us more than one bathroom per 40 staff members. Give us a safe place to put our work bags and personal items when we get to work. Give us enough chairs so we can sit sometimes. Give us enough computers for the nurses and staff to use. Give us enough counter space to write. Give us supplies like soap, paper towels, linens, meds, gloves etc. This is the tip of the iceberg. At the end of the fiscal year for the past few years the hospital I work for has had several million dollars left over. They have just purchased 150 acres of prime land for 19 million dollars for a new hospital and there is nothing wrong with the hospital we work in!! If my hospital would eliminate some of those high ranking people in administration there would be no financial burden on the hospital and patients would be treated like they are supposed to be because nurses would not be set up to fail as we are now. I am trapped for the moment but I am in school and get through the shift knowing I don't have to be a nurse forever. And for those who read this with the intent to flame me for what little about my job I have exposed here: I do care about people, I do want to help people, I am not a monster, I wish nursing could be like they show on TV or like they tell you it should be when you are in nursing school BUT IT"S NOT!!! The best nurses I know are so angry about what has happened to what is supposed to be a profession that they come across as aggressive and cold to some but they will leave too and be replaced by fresh faced, low paid, brand new nurses who have not yet realized the trap they have fallen into (abuse, guilt, intimidation=what I like to call "battered nurse syndrome")...but they will.
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09-30-2003 04:00 AM
