When nurses become jaded and angry every day, what are they, and those around them, to do?
A new piece in NursesTogether.com says if you’re a jaded nurse, it’s time to reevaluate and ask yourself why you got into the profession, how you have made a difference so far, and what you love about nursing. If these answers are enough to remind you that you want to be a nurse, then reset your attitude and give it your best, columnist Stephanie Staples argues.
However, the column also prompts nurses to ask themselves in times of stress if you are giving the best care, bringing colleagues’ attitudes up or pulling them down with your attitude, and whether they have any energy or emotion left for family at the end of the day. These are certainly tough questions. Though some nurses might say that the answers depend on any given day, if you reevaluate yourself enough and realize that your job is detrimental to your health and happiness, as well as those around, you may have some tough decisions to make, says Staples.
The column urges nurses who are no longer happy at their jobs to move on. That’s a tough message, but Staples argues that unhappy nurses create ripple effects that affect not only colleagues in their units, but also patient satisfaction and safety. Unless you can overcome the challenges of nursing and ultimately come through with the same motivation that led you to join the profession, it may be time to move on.
What do you think about this opinion? Have you dealt with a similar issue? Please let us know by commenting below.
September 18th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
The life expectancy of a bedside nurse has dwindled due to the fact that nurses are taking care of higher acuity patients and face the threat of legal retribution on a daily basis. The paperwork requirements have tripled and the time for patient:nurse interaction has become minimal.
When a nurse is faced with this type of dilemma there should be extensive thought put into their decision. The nurse should first remember the true reason that she chose the art of nursing. If it was for anything other than caring and compassion than by all means…..GET OUT! If the nurse truly does care for the patients that need her but has become burnt out over time she should consider other areas of nursing. Nursing education, patient teaching, writing and various other specialties are out there waiting for a someone to fill the void.
One should make their decision with much thought and feeling from the heart.
September 21st, 2009 at 10:12 am
As a residency coordinator with new nursing graduates, I face 2 huge challenges in trying to help these fledgling nurses enter & stay in the nusing workforce in a positive way.
1) Finding & keeping enough knowledgeable, caring preceptors that are capable of helping teach & nurture these new nurses appropriate, instead of being all too ready to cast them out there quickly so they have better staffing. Training helps, but only when there is support from management/adminstration as well.
2) Lack of commitment & support on the part of some unit nurse managers & adminstration. Verbal support is provided, but with some, nearly constant monitoring is necessary to try to prevent abuse of these tender new graduates. No matter how hard you try, a program to ease them into this new role will not work if adminstrative & managerial support are lacking. It seems to have worsened with the economy & the movement is back to the old “any body with a license will do…and new grads are cheaper licensed bodies to fill the holes on the schedule” even if they are not competent or confident in that role yet.
3) Misplacement in their original unit of hire. Nursing school really does not, by & large, provide with a real-world understanding of what working on a particular unit will be like…whether or not it will actually be a good fit for them. Ever hospital & every unit is different, not just because of the type of nursing done there, but because of the culture of the entire group of people that make up the “family” on that particular unit. They really can’t know until they give a unit a try whether or not it is fits them like home…or whether they will fit in. When they are hired directly out of school for an nursing position on a particular unit, all too often, they find that it is NOT where they really feel they ought to be. Maybe hiring them in as a nurse tech who rotates to several units over a 2 month period before deciding on “home” would be a better approach. It would also give both the new grad & the facility the bonus of making it much easier later on when staffing adjustments need to be made that require pulling nurses to other units….they would have at least been to a few of those & not feel so alien in that arena.
Another problem I see crop up over & over is that students (doesn’t matter what school of nursing from which they come) often have instructors that have convinced them that they really “need” to start out on a med-surg type unit to become good nurses. I’ve taught as nursing faculty in schools of nursing for better than a decade now & I have to say, we have got to do away with this old school line of thinking!! We have so many nurses who come to the profession as a second career, at a later time in their lives. We also have a tremendous number (easily found in the nursing literature on the shortage & nursing retention) of new grads who will leave their first nursing job within 6 months (about half of them in fact), and & significant chunk of those will leave nursing altogether at that point, losing them as the assets they could be to our profession, possibly simply because of a bad experience in their first postion. I have to wonder how mnany of those leave because they weren’t in the right area of nursing on on the right unit with the right preceptor with appropriate managerial/adminstrative support?? If the reason I got into nursing is because I loved my experience giving birth & the way the nurses helped me there, then why in the world is it necessary that I start out on a med-surg floor? Especially if I only have 10-15 years before retirement age?
I know about this experience personally…
Back in the dark ages when I became a brand new nurse (25+ years ago now), I was placed in absolutely the wrong place with only about a week of orientation to work in a specialty unit I’d visited all of twice as a student nurse. Terrified is a pathetically weak word for what I felt there as the only RN taking care of extremely ill patients. After 6 months of crying almost every night that I had to go into work & praying that I didn’t accidentally cause harm or death to my patients, I went to our DON telling her I needed a transfer to an area with more support & that was a better fit, or that I was prepared to get out of this gig altogether & go back to working at Wendy’s & Burger Shack (the jobs that got me through nursing school.)I was as serious as I could get at that point, & luckily had a DON who listened, understood & allowed me to move to the pediatric unit….which truly is my passion in nursing. I had wonderful support there & it completely changed how I felt about nusing as a profession. That experience is why I snapped up this position when it became available…to create a program that would help new grads avoid that sort of trauma & hopefully decrease the risk of losing them to the profession altogether.
The burn-out topic spurred me to write about this because I think it applies in several ways. Burnt-out floor nurses & preceptor, burnt-out & disconnected managers/adminstrators & misguided new grads who are subjected to those folks will only worsen our problems with recruiting & retaining new nurses to help alleviate the shortage. They will burn-out as well, like shooting stars in the heavens, if we don’t start nurturing them as we care & concern as we would expect of nurses caring for patients.
Off the soapbox for the day
& Thank you for providing this forum to discuss the effects of burn-out on all of us…well seasoned & new alike.
September 28th, 2009 at 10:49 am
[...] Should Unhappy Nurses Quit the Profession? [...]
February 2nd, 2010 at 8:47 pm
I have been a nurse for 13 years and I only wish that I could flip burgers at McDonald’s and make what I make as a nurse. If I could………….I would gladly give up my license. I have absolutely no compassion left in me anymore.
May 18th, 2010 at 2:04 pm
20+ years in surgery, i love the work. i hate the endless documentation. admininistration wants faster turnovers and with a flawed computer documentation program(it’s still problematic after 2 years in place)it’s not possible for “real time charting” our hospital has become a joke. we have to document implants, sometimes 10, 20 or more implants in the computer and the same old paper implant record we always used it’s become as ridiculous as it is irritating. if an implant is new we have to fill out an extra sheet with the implant info as well as th other docs. triple redundancy is the norm here. i finally said enough and quit, im taking care of a sickly mother and was out of paid time off, sick time and occurances so it was time. the stress was killing me, now 2 weeks of not working, i really never want to go back to nursing unless im just first assisting or scrubbing i think i’m done with the paperwork side of insanity. the hospital blames everyone except administrations poor choices i.e. buying a defunct hospital to keep a larger hospital from obtaining it, building a 1/2 hospital to be finished over the next several years (patients are not sure where to even go) scratch that…yes they do…ANOTHER HOSPTAL.. and thats exactly what they have done. we are losing 2 million a month as the high, last month we lost a modest 60 grand. i’m a really good o.r. nurse some people have told me i’m the best, i’m certainly not mediocre, we have had over 50 years of o.r. nursing experience walk out the door in the last 6 weeks…i had 20+, the other 3 nurses had 9,10 and 12 years experience all at this hospital, i traveled or 8+ years and this is as redonculous as i have seen.
June 5th, 2010 at 7:57 pm
Kasey, have you found a new profession yet? I admire you for realizing that it is time to get out but maybe you need not leave nursing entirely. Just get away from the bedside. What your feeling is very common.
June 17th, 2010 at 8:38 am
Nurses such as myself. Get stressed out very subtly. It started in Nursing school. Something messed up I could not put a finger on. Stress of being only American Born Nurse with a group of Nurses from another culture. Learning nursing and dealing with another culture. Hanging in there - stress does not go away it is getting worse. Try harder. Get tired look for different position. Get new Position like it. Hospital downsizes - you lose. Sorry. Not your fault. Get another job. Slowly like a morphine drip you slowly realize that nothing will change. You will always be understaffed. You will always be in conflict with some Nurse over ?. You continue to turn all the stress inward. Everybody who is not a Nurse say that you are complaining to much. Get another position. Work in another unit with another foreign culture ( they like to specialize). Only this one is different and do not want you to be their coworker. They have no bones about not liking you (Ethnocentric extreme) I call it inbreed. Change job again work with Insane Physicians who abuse to be like everybody else. Got to fit in. Stress must be internalized nobody seems to care anyways. Or they are from a culture unlike yours. They look at you like your crazy. Sorry you are part of the culture. Deal with Pompous MD showing off his $40.000 watch. You are not part of the club sorry. The CEO pops his head in to see if the slaves are not stealing the diamonds and are as productive as they dictate you should be. Oh yea they are not Nurses. But oh they make decisions for you. Do not complain. You try to be a robot. not humanly possible. Feel helpless. Nursing Administration Promises, Management says they have your back. You complain to protect your patient. Get pulled all over the place. You do it becouse you still have faith in the Hospital Philosphy. Unable to keep stress under control as good anymore. Get fired for something that is a lie and you know it. Leave after many years of above average work and wonder what the heck just happened. Slip into depression. Spouse gets you help (Thank god somebody loves me). You realize that You are on the wrong planet. Nobody cares. Nothing will change. You have to change youself. But now you know the truth. yes it took a long time and it almost killed you. But now you realize that it was stress, not your fault. You realize that you are a good person. You were in a situation that maybe a very passive person or the threat of being deported could only do under duress. Its time to go back to school hope for the best. Never will be a doctor. Never part of the inner sanctum. Money Talks, The truth Walks. Thank god you never
Facilitated anybodys demise. But you know alot. You are an insider. You could become a Legal consultant and try to let the law get some revenge for you. Or get another job and work until that becomes impossible. But you do not lie, you do not fudge alittle. Why are you so hard on yourself? Becouse you truly are the best Nurse and you are working in a system that does not care if you live or die. Just import some more Nurses and pretend that there is not a man behind the curtain. I am the Great and Powerful Health Care Reform. Nurses are asking what about us? We don’t count. Not alot of hot air. More like flatus being injected into your veins, with a smile and a coffee mug on Nurses week.
Prove me wrong. appeal to my intellect. Just your own facts. You do not know me. And you never walked in my shoes if you disagree with me. Also Mcdonalds is worse than Nursing
Mcdonalds is worse than Communism. Great Junk food. But such slave drivers. used to be good like Hospitals now I hope I dont catch MRSA/VRE from my next Hamburger. Nurses need to stand up and tell the Money that they care so much they can take care of the patients. Until Nurses get it written that they can make independent decisions and Charge for care of each patient. I made $27.75. after 20 years. Great. thats $4.50 to take care of 5-10 patients. thats about 40 cents/hour to care for 8 patients. Patients are on our side. We just need to scare that man behind the curtain. But I need you help.
But you are scared you need the income. Best of luck. I wish you never experience what I did. But from what Ive been reading on the internet I know I am not alone. The people that write that your a whiner! are they really a Nurse or some administration schlub who is part of this sick system saying they are a nurse. For all those who quit and turned their backs. I hope you still care. Well thats were Im at. 49 and worse off than when I started. I really care about fairness. I do not need a $40.000 watch. I need respect and power over my profession. Sorry for all those that sold out and found out that they were suckers. That really hurts. what happened to Womans lib? Nursing is not about change? I am a male and I love women of every stripe. I forgive those that did to me what they thought was right and I just want the best of a really bad situation. AMEN!!!!!!!!!! Now I am a criminal for speaking my mind. I need a new heart, brain and Courage. Glenda the good witch please help me! Time to make a stand. I will follow up. But I understand if you do not want to rock the boat. I never walked in your shoes. Believe my story is the tip of the iceberg. I was being polite.
June 26th, 2010 at 6:40 pm
I have been a nurse for 35 years!! I was burned out 10 years before I finally am not doing nursing. It was the best day of my life when I got out of nursing!! No more dealing with nurses who think they are the only ones that know how to do everything and they have only done nursing for 3-4 years! No more Director of Nurses who haven’t been on the floor for years and think that you should do everything and more and threaten your job if you don’t. Doctors who have no respect for nurses and want things done the second after they say it, no matter how busy you are or if you have a dying patient in another room. Doctors have no respect for nurses!! If a patient goes sour and dies unexpectedly, it is always the nurses fault!! Where was the doctor when you needed him? No where to be found!! I wonder how many patients have lost their life because doctors didn’t care enough to come and check them and have done what needed to be done to save the patients life!! It is always the nurses fault for everything that happens to a patient while they are in the hospital!! As nurses, we try to make sure the patient is comfortable in every way. We encourge the patients and listen to their woes, knowing we have 5-6 more patients out there that need our attention and caring ear,also. There is never enough time to do things right with the patient and by the end of the shift, the nurse is dragging physically and emotionally. Your heart just wants to cry out and many times tears come to your eyes because you know that you did all you could do with the amount of time that you had to do the care! It is never enough!! I just can’t do it anymore!! Doctors and director of nurses turning on their staff and blaming the nurse when the doctor could have been there and save that patients life!! There is no appreciation for nurses today by the hospitals, doctors and other nurses!! Everyone is out for number one-themselves! Who cares about others around them?!!
June 27th, 2010 at 6:18 pm
Sue: I couldn’t agree more. The stress has gotten to me after 25 years to the point that I had a “meltdown”, I’m walking from nursing. I am doing a litle writing and taking an online AHIMA accredited medical coding course. Coders alone don’t make too much, but it can be finessed into managing a clinic or office, working at home, etc. I was invited to go into real estate by a local office, and I’m outgoing and fun(at least I always have been), so that might be something I could do very well at. If you will share,what are you doing for a career, and what do other nurses who leave nursing seek out for careers? Still need money coming in.
July 21st, 2010 at 7:10 pm
Hello nurses, I just found this site and I am so glad I did. I was wondering if I was the only nurse with 30 years of experience , ready to walk!! this is all I know and love it but I am sick of all the corporate world dictating to me what kind of nurse I should be. I had a meltdown at my last job of 19 years!! and took a severance pkg for 6 months. I have been looking for a job and boy have things changed. remember when you filled out an application in person and they asked when can you start? now its on line and no one calls you back. I am trying to do home health or hospice prn , thats all I can take. I am trying to decide what I can do besides nursing, its a shame because I have always wanted to be a nurse. we make good money but there is a price, thankfully hubby says do what I want to do. Lets pay our bills off so we want have to be servants to the corporate world, who are not nurses.. take care everyone.
July 22nd, 2010 at 7:08 am
Hi Nurses! At last, a place for us to vent. I agree with Diane, Sue, Anita and especially David. I too, quit nursing after 35 yrs, for the same reasons you have. And the main reason was the way the new nurses attend the patients. They were texting, and shopping online, while their patients were crying, needed suctioning, ringing the light. And when you ask them to help, they are “busy”. And i just couldn’t believe how a hospital could hire these nurses and risk the liability. I was OR and ICU most of my carreer. I became disgruntled and stressed with the mandatory overtime, and lack of vacation time, and although the money was great, I started to stockpile the money, and just quit, and am not working. The best thing I ever did to keep me in nursing all those years was to work other Perdiem jobs at the same time, to give me a different perspective, home care part time, and on call for recovery room.Anyway, do not go to an insurance comapny. I did that thinking being in an office would be great! It was the worst. Assembly line, no thinking, rote responses from a script, and nothing is right unless you save them money. None of the other career choices you mentioned looks promising after a burnout. The best idea is to go to school for another degree. Especially higher nursing degree. There, you can work part time in a clinic, as a practitioner, and an office, and leave the stress to the ancillary help!
July 27th, 2010 at 4:00 pm
After being a nurse for 29 years, I got my first rejection email! I cried I have never experienced a NO before. I need to work. I am constantly thinking about what I can do besides nursing with a RN. I also am thinking about medical billing and coding, but I dont know much about it.. any help? thanks
August 12th, 2010 at 5:02 pm
So glad to meet you all! I was an LVN for 4 years and completely burnt out so I bought a dog and cat grooming shop which I had for 15 years. That was a great 15 years away from the slavery of the LVN world. I then really did not know where to turn so I found the world of “paperwork nursing” and the start of Case Management (inferno-hell!). C.M. was a good gig in the beginning but now is indescribable torture. I worked insurance, hospital, worker’s comp, appeals, HEDIS, authorizations, you name it. Then after being an LVN for almost 25 years I made the decision to get my RN. Somehow I thought that if I finally completed my RN, then maybe I could shut the door on it. No, nothing really changed but it did feel good to go from being “Just an LVN” to “Just an RN”. I’m not sure if the jobs got worse or better. I was not even being paid more in every case! I am soooooo burned out I cannot stomach the thought of one more day as a nurse. I think I would actually vomit. If it was not for my boyfriend I would be homeless. I did become a hypnotherapist for smoking cessation, but this good side business does not provide a regular income by any means. So now what? Where does a highly skilled competent on-the-ball 52 yr/old go for work? I am thinking about a slow doctor’s office. Maybe an old doctor ready to retire, or maybe a busy plastic surgery office with insecure women who want lots of procedures and I can re-assure them. Reiki anyone?
September 2nd, 2010 at 1:49 pm
I graduated from a diploma nsg program in 1976 and have been employed full time since then. Many things have changed in the nsg profession over that time. Some things have gotten easier such as computer charting, and access to pts information. It seems though that the more technology improves the less time nurses spend with their pts. Jacho and other accrediting agencies have made it so nurses spend much of their time documenting and less and less with the pts themselves. I realize that these organizations are attempting to improve pt safety standards but in real life they have the opposite effect. Every Jacho staff should have to work on a nsg unit for a week before they pass any requirement on to hospitals. Insurance companies and medicare require certain data if you want them to pay for certain procedures. Core measures etc are published and often the data does not accurately reflect what a hospital is doing and how they are caring for pts. Nsg as a profession creates ill feelings among nurses by constantly separating out associate , diploma verses BSN nurses. All of the above take and have to pass the exact same nursing boards to be come licensed as a RN. However BSN programs teach that they are the professional nurses and the associate nurses are techncal nurses only. I am all for higher education but most of your BSN nurses return to school almost immediately for a NP, or MSN and have never really had alot of clinical experience caring for pts. In the end your educators with MSN and PHD’s who are educating new nurses and making decisions that affect nursing care and practice in every day life have little or no clinical experience themselves. The criteria to apply for an advanced RN position is 2 yrs experience with pt care. Have you ever known anyone who was able to become an advanced practationer in 2 years time?
So today we have all this data, all these reported numbers and statistics, we have all these awards ie Magnet status,the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality award, practicing evidence based medicine. Everyone is so into the numbers and data they fail to even look at the inidividual pts.
I became a nurse so that I could be a pt advocate and the voice for the pt who could not speak themselves. Nursing requires an individual to be responsible for their individual practice and take responsibility for the decisions they make while caring for pts. A certain standard of care has to be expected by nsg managers and administrators and individuals have to be held accountable to that standard. You can’t change the level of that standard ever time you have a nsg shortage and need more nurses. I totally agree that if you are burned out you need to get out of nursing. The last thing a sick pt or grieving family needs is a uncaring nurse who really does not want to be there taking care of you or your loved one. You would not want someone like that caring for you or a family member of yours.
I love my job, I love being a nurse…yes there are times when I am frustrated and overworked and bogged down with paperwork with no end in sight…but at the end of the day my patients and their families always have more on their plate they I do and yet they have such strength and endless faith and voice no complaints. I look at the situations they have to deal with and think I really don’t have it that bad. They give me strength each day to be the best that I can be and do the most for the pts and families who will never forget your words of kindness or your acts of compassion. Their graditude for the extra minute you took to show you cared makes everything I find frustrating and negative about nursing worthwhile.