Getting Tired of the Awful Nurses Discussed on the Main Borad?
I am aware that we have our "bad apples" in the nursing profession. But, I'm really tired of the focus being on them! It is a reality that patients always remember the bad nurses more than the good ones. They come to us sick and in their worst emotional shape. Add to that unpleasant experience having nurses who are abusive, forgetful and rude...and that patient will never forget, tell young people not to be nurses, not trust that hospital, etc. What a shame!! -Rusty
Rusty,
I agree with you and worry for all of us as patients in an aging large population of baby boomers. The fact is I would never encourage my daughter or sons to be nurses. The field is full of landmines and frustration. If they had a burning desire that would be different but otherwise I recommend a less stressful route.
laurie
Rusty, But someone has to be there to take care of us baby boomers when we reach our retirement years. I've been a nurse for 27 years and love what I do. There are so many areas in nursing, if you are tired, move on to another area, keep fresh, keep learning and you won't burn out. Life is what YOU MAKE OF IT!!! I try to stay on the positive side of things and keep smiling. Tonia
Tonia - Hi! I've been at this for 33 years and I really want a good nurse, too, but it won't be my daughter! She says she saw me go through so much with different jobs -- working my butt off and not getting the recognition I deserved monetarily -- she would NEVER go through that. So what is she doing??? She's the manager of an upscale restaurant!! I'd rather work with doctors!

Hello Rusty!
If I had a very good nurse taking care of me I would shout it from the highest roof top!!! Tell the entire world lol. Nurses don't hear enough positive strokes from patients or their supervisors. My best reinforcement of positive strokes for me is to see my patient comfortable, not in pain and understands about his/her condition and how to continue the self care at home. No matter how busy and crazy wild it is on my floor, I would never ever be one of those," abusive, forgetful and rude nurses." I tell any people who want to go into nursing you need to be ready to run your legs off, work hard,not have many "potty breaks" lol or lunch breaks,not have many weekends or holidays off, not have much of a family life or personal life, the salary is not as good as it should be for having a person's life in your hands and you should love your patients and be their advocate at great lengths.
As for not trusting the hospital, I believe it is as good as the people who work there doing the over and above work expectations in times of a shortage of nurses and higher acuity levels of patients. God bless all the caring, compassionate, empathetic nurses in the world! 

PS I hope and pray I am fortunate enough to have that nurse taking care of me when I have my WLS.



There will always be the "bad apples" however I have made it my mission to teach the younger ones on my unit the way I would want to be taken care of if I was ill. Our years of knowledge must be passed on becasue it will be those young kids someday that will be taking care of us and I want it to be the right way.LOL. It's great when I can pull in one of the newer nurses to help the Doc insert a line/ do an emergent intubation/ or for me be a back up on a new admit or fresh heart etc. It increases their chance of learning. I am fortunate that I work with a great group of Doctors ( specialists ) that give us alot of praise and autonomy in our practice. The bad apples dont last long on our units we weed them out pretty fast.
Unike many ICU's ours is a hodgepodge of everything. Everything from fresh open hearts to med-surg icu patients. Its gets kinda hairy at times but works and gives even our most unexperienced or new RN's the oppurtunity to learn from the veteran's. OUr patients never wanted to leave our units and now they don not have too..
We just last week opened our new Comprehensive Care Unit. Initialy the gys up stairs wanted to call it the Family Focused Unit. However after saying FFU they got the message that it would not be good PR so it was changed. A point blank statement from a member of the staff saying how ling before someone thinks we are saying in a hurry "F..K You" , LOLOL A beautiful 32 bed state of the art unit that is combining all ICU and Step Down unit patients and telemetry patients. Once the patient in admitted to the unit they stay until discharge. They just get downgraded from ICU to PCIU to Medical or Surgical patients and staffing ratios change. The rooms are HUGE. The patient has their own area. A Large Handicap accessible bathroom/shower. Each room has a family area with a sofa bed/ chair / desk/theirown TV/ and internet connection off to the side of the room. One family member can stay in the room at all times. We also went to open visitation. I am not really how sure this will work in the long run but so far its not been so bad. Just really stress ful since we changed from a fish bowl enviroment to such wide open spaces, families their all the time and ICU patients not side by side as they always have been. Also you always have those patients that everyone on staff cant wait til they transfer out to Medical or Surgical Units?? Well that wont happen anymore. I have seen that it is making many nurses think past critical care to more holistic care. Supposedly there are only 10 units likethis in the USA but its the new trend.
I know there are some really stupid people in this world.. But they are not necessary all nurses.. Some are, but for the most part nursing is a great job.
Think of the variety.. What other profession lets you choose what you want to do. Acute care, clinic care home care, long term care, surgery, etc. Damn it if you are unhappy with your life, who's fault is that?
If WLS taught me anything it was I am responsible for my decisions.
I had WLS in Aug 03 and in 9-03 I started to vomit, 20 -30- time a day. I couldn't stop. I ended up in the hospital for 17 days, on TPN and finally had my gallbladder removed after all that, The Md's were convienced that GB wasn't the problem, But when they finally took it out I got better. And stopped puking.....
I learned alot about being a patient during that time and alot about guilt. After all I made the decision to have WLS and I had to live with the outcome. So in a round about way the mishap was my fault.. I though i would die from the guilt. or maybe I would just vomit all the life out of me.. hell i don't really know what i though.. But I did learn something. I learned that I too can be a non-compliant patient.. God don't let my old friends in the ER hear that.
So when you start getting down on us nurses, please remember..
EDucation and EMpathy is what we need to practice. You can NEVER learn too much and YOU can always become a Patient......
I hope that my daughter will think about being a NURSE. but I don't know if she will. She is a senior in highschool and is a volunteer on the local fire dept. she has her first responder cert. But she thinks of nursing as BLOOD and GOre, and can't get pass that.
Maybe someday.