Critical Caring

Over the last four months I have done quite a bit of searching and reflection on my own about how I feel in this nursing thing. I've been a nurse for 3 1/2 years now. I went part-time in November. I can't recover from the three 12 hour shifts.

I hit bottom one day in November after I was treated so cruelly by most of the members of the leadership team, and a physician, that I cried the entire day and then called in sick for a couple of weeks. I was told by the person who leads the effort to create a so-called "healthy workplace", "Well I guess she knows who she can pick on." That was in reference to the physician, who is known as "the witch" by her colleagues and "the bitch" by the nurses on our staff. This particular doctor used to be a nurse herself, and she is by far the nastiest of all the doctors we ever deal with.

My boss was right there and heard that statement and said nothing.

I was in a downward spiral the entire second half of last year. My life was falling apart outside of work, I'd lost interest in my normal activities, I felt like I wasn't thinking, I had no energy.

I did two things. First I went to the doctor and got antidepressants because I wasn't functioning at all. After a week or so on those, I decided to call the EAP (Employee Assistance Program) and get some counseling. I figured, they're driving me crazy, I might as well make them pay for it. I ended up with about a dozen free sessions.

Once the SSRI kicked in, for the first month or so I was feeling much better but I was also getting very angry and resentful because I was seeing what my fogged brain couldn't see clearly before. The realization that I am being treated like shit. I am dirt under their feet. I will never get anywhere, I will never be treated with respect, I will never be given any opportunities to grow, I will never be supported, I will be expected to remain in my job and beg for scraps if I want to get more experience, get sicker patients, or have other experiences that build on my critical care skills.

I am tired of asking for things that never pan out, or being excluded from opportunities, having the line drawn above my head. I see lazy people, people who are not very smart, and only for the fact that they socialize with the boss or the nurse manager, thhey get everything. They get trained as charge nurses, they get special positions made for them, they get promotions, they get included in communication. They get breaks from the intensity of patient care. They are princesses and ass kissers.

The way the rest of us are treated is with dehumanizing, disrespectful contempt. The soulless, shallow, empty, inhumane creatures who are our fearless leaders have no empathy, no understanding of the feelings that real people experience.

I posted something to a website with a comment on how nursing treats it's members. One of the things I said was that nurses take care of their patients but not themselves, and that nurses need to treat each other better, and take better care of themselves as individuals. Then the profession would be much better for it.

I got a response back. One. She told me I was her hero. She said she was a nurse for 25 years and she left to go into something else because she couldn't deal with it anymore. She sees the nurses eat their young. Now she deals with nurses but doesn't have to do nursing.

It's amazing to me that nurses will continue to allow themselves to be treated like little more than poorly paid slaves, pathetically inadequately compensated for the work they do. It's crossed my mind that if nursing had been a male-dominated profession from the start, nurses would be paid and benefitted far beyond the level they are today. It's not even a comfortable living wage, if you work three 12 hour shifts a week. The amount of fatigue and emotional and physical toll it takes makes it impossible to sustain working at this level for many years without physical injury to the body. Not to mention the emotional fatigue and burnout.

I think if we're going to work 12 hour shifts, we should work two of them and that would be considered maximum, and a living wage should be paid for that. Nurses need sabbaticals, they need adequate pay and benefits, they need a retirement program, they need support.

In reality, we're at each others throats, scratching each others' eyeballs out. This is the first time I've really worked in a female-dominated profession and it amazes me the unkindness with which we treat each other, from the top down.

My boss runs our department like an junior high girls' clique. She surrounds herself with a thick wall of yes-women and men, no one can possibly do any wrong at this leadership level, and certainly aren't exposed to the scrutiny that the rest of us are. There's no accountability, there's no expectation to deliver anything tangible for the department.

The communication is terrible, we have a nurse manager who has the worst communication skills imaginable, and no empathy to boot.

My boss starts projects that sound good and then drops them in favor of the next project. She is pursuing a award for the department while the staff is far from the level it needs to be to qualify for the award. We don't get any substance, just B.S. The only time she demands acountability is on progress toward the award application. There is no integrity whatsoever coming from the top.

After busting my ass one day, the nasty charge nurse on her way out the door said to my co-worker, "you're the bomb!", audibly, right there in front of me, and I got no appreciation or help whatsoever all day after dealing with an irate family member due to something that happened in the days before I took the patient.

I had my assignment switched without them telling me why, and then I got two sick, busy admits, the first of which was a demented patient who needed a thoracentesis, chest tube insertion, and multiple line placements and needed a sitter to watch her constantly so she wouldn't climb out of bed or pull out her chest tube. I sprinted nonstop all day, barely got to eat lunch at 2:30 in the afternoon, then got another sick, busy admit on hypothermia protocol after a cardiac arrest, I was the busiest nurse on the unit all day long, and this other guy was "the bomb"?

After they switched my assignment, I was not told what the issue was. No one came to talk to me, despite my asking, to debrief me on whether the problem was with me or something else that had taken place. I was too busy to talk with the counselor about that because he was busy talking with two of the families of two of the patients I had all day, the sickest patients on the floor and with the most psychosocial needs.

The bomb my ass!

It's dehumanizing.

A week later I finally caught up with the counselor to ask what happened with that patient, since I had never heard what the issue was or why they switched my assignment. It would be nice to know these things. I had walked into a booby trap, as it turned out. It would have been nice to know something about that from the charge nurse before I went in.

There is no trust, no morale in the unit. The staff don't trust the boss or anyone in charge, they talk amongst themselves, fearful of retribution, for good reason, as they have already witnessed several times the vindictiveness of the boss and her minions. The passive aggressive, foot-dragging unaccountable people who get everything handed to them, can sit around and do nothing, going into overtime, getting paid extra for their status, having two to four hour meetings on a weekly basis to sit around and gossip about the staff while the rest of us are out slaving our butts off.

One time in a staff meeting I asked, "What do you do in those four hour meetings? How does it benefit the unit?"

I was replied to with stuttering from the nurse manager, "W...w...well I guess we could send out a summary of what we're doing." The summary happened once. We never heard from them again.

I feel completely devalued and unappreciated. I feel like a bug and I'm being stepped on. Squished. Crunching under their feet. Do they not recognize the value of my abilities? Do they not see that I have worthwhile talents and skills and background and wisdom to bring to the workplace? Can they not see that my insistence on treating people humanely could be a valuable thing?

Of course they do, and it scares the hell out of them, because it's a threat to their entire existence.

Three and a half years into my nursing career, I know that if I don't get out of this environment, I will be old before my time, I have already aged more than 3 1/2 years since I started, my health will be ruined. I could turn into one of those nasty nurses.

I don't know how someone made it 25 years.

Is there something about nursing that attracts these horrible nasty people, or do we create them through the way we treat each other?

It's time to move on. I've been actively pursuing a position in another department and right now budgets are tight. I need the security of a regular permanent guaranteed number of hours as I have in my current position. But I am talking to people, listening, learning, putting my energy toward moving on. And I will. Its just a matter of time. I don't want to jump into another bad situaton or take a floor nursing job where I would feel like a waitress.

I have gifts and talents to bring to nursing and I need to go where those are appreciated and nurtured and grown. I am worth it.