Plotting my escape

I'm still in a funk today. This is evidenced by a) I'm drinking an alcoholic beverage and b) I bought a pack of smokes. I never drink alcohol unless I'm celebrating (good) or in a funk about something (bad). Ditto with smoking.

As a nurse said to me last night in consolation, "You know, going from one nursing job to another is like going from one abusive relationship straight into another."

I laughed, but only because her observation is right on point.

The learned helplessness and quiet despair of hospital nurses is eye-opening. And they keep wondering why they have a nursing shortage. Well, let's see... when you reprimand your staff for doing their job and being nice to irate family members, work us constantly short staffed, allow us to be roundly abused by any other department that sees fit (I'd like to see a doctor get written up for "being rude"; the image is just too absurd, sadly), then treat us like five-year-olds with subnormal IQs, what, pray tell, is the incentive to keep working as a hospital nurse? Who the hell wants to be told "work on your time management skills" when they work us short staffed on the floor, book up all the beds any way, and you can't take a lunch and have to work an hour and a half over your shift? Who the hell gives a damn about us, any way?

It's sad I have to look at getting a half hour, uninterrupted lunch break during a 12 hour shift as a bonus rather than a labor law and my right. It's sad that I can be verbally abused by house officers, attendings, residents, interns, dietary, admitting, staffing, laboratory, housekeeping, patients, family members and friends visiting, clinical techs etc. etc., and yet the moment I assert myself, someone runs to the head nurse and says I'm rude. I can't tell you how many times I've run into insubordinance (asking a tech to do something and have them sit on her ass or give me lip about doing it) and rudeness and done nothing, because the minute an RN goes to complain to management, believe me, she gets a tech that really will make her life a living hell. It's a lose-lose situation.

Ergo, I've made the Big Kahuna decision to quit. Not just yet, but as soon as I can work out the details of where to go and what to do next. Being reprimanded (when I should have been supported) for a patient family member's lunatic complaint is the last straw. I am not going to allow myself to be continually exploited, abused, and then reprimanded for doing my job. Just because some crazy family member complains doesn't mean s/he is right, for God's sake. But bother to listen to the nurse's side of the situation? Bother to acknowledge how hard it is to do our job and how hard we work to do it as best we can? Bother to ask us what might help the situation? Bother to LISTEN to us at all?

HA HA.

The saddest part about the whole damn thing is I like being a nurse. I love the troubleshooting, I love learning about medical conditions and treatments, I love (most of) my patients, I love my cohort of nurses (I'd have quit on the spot yesterday if it weren't for the fact that I respect and care for my coworkers), and I love helping another human being who needs help. It's the other bullshit that comes along with the good stuff that makes the job impossible to do without hurling yourself out the window in despair.

Yesterday I even thought about going back to divinity school, picking up an MDiv, and doing pastoral counseling in hospitals. I also thought about becoming a drug rep, even though I'd have to knock myself off my moral pedastal a bit (although seriously, I clean up shit for living, what am I thinking). I also thought about working as a cashier in a grocery store, where all I have to do is zip food products across a little infared sensor. I don't even have to be particularly nice. And never, ever, would I have to save someone's life, worry about killing someone if I make a mistake and the price rings up higher than advertised, or work fourteen hours straight without eating or taking a break.