ONLY TWO DAYS LEFT….
Posted by Karen on Nov 29 2007
…..for NaBloPoMo!
And two more questions to answer! Did I time that perfectly or what? Carolynn from Western Australia writes: You have mentioned before that you are a Paediatric Nurse, are you still practicing and in what field. What was your favourite area. I have spent the last 23.5 years in Neonatal Intensive Care, in the same Unit and absolutely love it. I have been nursing now since 1974 and still love it as much today as I did then.
Do you have any ideas how we can attract young people into Nursing and to get them to stay in the field. I would imagine that the US and Canada has the same problems with Staffing as we have here in Austraia. Here in Australia 65% of the Nursing profession are 50 years of age and over and we are struggling to Staff the Hospitals we have now and we desparately need to increase the Bedstate??? What happens when we older ones decide it would be nice to Retire?
Yup, Carolynn, I am a pediatric nurse! I received my B.S.N. from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1990. I went to work in a local hospital on the pediatric unit. I was actually hired as the official Peds/OB float so in the summer when the peds unit was slow, I’d work on the postpartum unit. In hind sight, I had no idea what I was doing in OB! Having had two kids and nursing both of them, I’m sure I’d be a much better resource to OB patients now. But I digress.
I worked there for a year until I married the wonderful Dr. Mike and moved to a new city. At that point I worked in a regional Children’s Hospital in their SICU. Our unit was highly specialized focusing on surgical problems for children under the age of 2. Most of the problems we saw were congenital anomalies (my favorite being gastroschisis) It was a challenging job that had its ups and downs.
After giving birth to KT, I switched to a peds office practice. The main reason for the switch was to get better hours and no night shifts because Dr. Mike was just starting as an intern! And we all know how crazy those hours are!
After having Nick, daycare costs pretty much would have eaten up my income, so that’s when I began my stay-at-home journey.
To tell you the gosh awful truth, I’m really out of the loop when it comes to the nursing profession. I have no idea where the shortages are, what pay scales are at, or what the current benefit packages contain. I will give you a couple of ideas about what I think are a couple of problems with the profession from my own experiences.
For one, the schedule that nursing jobs require are just very difficult ones to maintain when you have kids. When I was pregnant with KT it was stressful for me to consider where I was going to find daycare for her that would accept her at 6:00 in the morning, or overnight for when my intern husband was on call, or on Sundays, or on holidays. I didn’t have family close enough to watch the baby, and I’m sure that’s the case with many many nurses. Hence the switch to an office practice. No Sundays, no night shifts, no holidays.
I also think it’s a thankless job. Some of the work nurses do is just downright disgusting. It has to be done, and it has to be done right. It also has to be done in such a way to maintain a patient’s dignity. Most kids these days don’t want to do such nasty jobs. But in nursing, there is no way around it.
One of the things that really irritated me about the nursing profession was having to work with all women. Ok, I’ll admit, we did have two male nurses on the unit, but for the most part they were women. Gossipy, catty, cliquey women. I’m not a clique person. I didn’t fit in for that reason. I also didn’t fit in because I worked hard and was extremely conscientious about patient care. It bugged me to no end that certain nurses (mostly those who were in the head nurse’s clique) gave minimal or sub-par care. It seemed like many times I was picking up slack for others because the only person who was going to suffer was that little baby. I know cutting coupons from the Sunday paper is important, but not when your patient’s IV is beeping. Ok, vent over.
But how about another vent? Unit policies must be fair to everyone. Case in point…. I was due in July with KT. In May, I actually started working at the pediatric office part time while still working in the SICU full time. I worked days at the office (there’s that good hours thing) and I did swing shifts in the SICU. Every two weeks I rotated between days and nights. So there were periods where I’d work a day shift, then the next day I’d work nights, then days, then nights, until finally I switched back to day shift in the SICU and then I’d work all days for two weeks. My nurse manager explained to me that I couldn’t have special treatment just because I opted to take another job.
Until a nurse in her clique did the same thing–picked up another part time job. Suddenly it was alright for that nurse to give up her night shift rotation. When I asked again, it was shot down. So for two months I worked this nutty schedule and that helped seal my decision to quit working there after KT was born. Could I have gone over the nurse manager’s head and reported the unfair situation? Sure, but it’d have come back to haunt me. After all, I’d have been messing with her clique. At that point, even though the schedule was exhausting and irritating, it was just easier to do it for 2 months than to subject myself to the consequences.
So I don’t know what can be done. More money? Better schedules? More support? Onsite 24 hour daycare? Fair distribution of patient loads? No special treatment for certain nurses? I dunno. I will say, it’s going to take a lot to get me to consider going back. As much as I loved the babies and the care involved, I can’t imagine putting myself through everything else that goes along with it.
*I apologize for my somewhat disjointed, scatterbrained response to this post. It’s just nuts over here.
on 29 Nov 2007 at 11:22 am 1 Deb said …
I never thought about nursing as a career when I was younger, even though my aunt (a nurse) tried to talk me into it since she was hoping someone in my generation would keep up the tradition (her mother was also a nurse). But after I had Abby and saw how wonderful the nurses were at the hospital and how fulfilling of a career it seemed, I did think about it for a while. What stopped me from pursuing it? My aunt, for one - she had since retired and spoke very much the same way about the profession that you did here. And also the 5-year waiting list, just to get into nursing school. Seems crazy when there are so many nursing shortages!
on 29 Nov 2007 at 1:20 pm 2 Awesome Mom said …
A very interesting post. I think a lot of jobs exist where some people get to break the rules and others are treated unfairly. That is one really great thing about staying at home. I get to be my own boss.
on 29 Nov 2007 at 4:25 pm 3 Susanna said …
I found your post about nurses refreshingly honest!
My son was a preemie, hospitalized for 5.5 weeks before he could come home. I spent 12 hours a day at his bedside, and so I spent A LOT of time with the nurses in the special care nursury at two hospitals in our city.
And I was completely unimpressed. Like you said, those ladies (with some notable exceptions) were catty and lazy, and more concerned with playing Jewel on-line than caring for babies. One nurse even ‘bragged’ to me that she’d never read a book on baby care! She was making fun of my own reading material. One nurse was really great, really helpful, but my impression of the rest was that they were just putting in time.
Also, I didn’t get the sense that there was a nursing shortage, but rather a shortage of money to pay them. The nurses in my son’s ward were all cobbling together shifts from various hospitals, trying to make a full schedule, like substitute teachers.
No, I wouldn’t recommend working as a nurse in a hospital to anyone I know. Karen, you might enjoy work as a “community nurse” better than that type of work. In my city, we have nurses who specialize in caring for kids 0-5, who visit new mothers at their homes to offer support for nursing, etc., and speak at pre-schools and daycares about health and development issues. These women, I’ve found, all seem happy and knowledgeable, and this seems like a rewarding career.
on 29 Nov 2007 at 11:12 pm 4 Midsummer Night (Listed as Fair Love above) said …
This was really interesting. I am just amazed at how many problems there are in the nursing field.
on 30 Nov 2007 at 2:47 am 5 shauna said …
My sister is a float nurse working the nightshift. (And, come to think of it, my sister-in-law is a nurse as well–one of those great nurses). I think it takes a very special person to be a GOOD nurse–I could tell the difference immediately when I was in the hospital after having each of my children. My sister is one of those special people. She likes being a float nurse because she seems to avoid that cliquey, political stuff. It’s sad that such an important profession is riddled with those problems.
on 30 Nov 2007 at 10:53 am 6 reba said …
my mother in law is a nurse and God Bless her! She works 2-12 hour shifts 2-8 hour shifts overnight or day just depends plus she is going to school to get her BSRN having gone to nursing school some 20 years ago. She is really a caring person and i think she is well suited to it, but i will tell you when she tells me stories I know that i would not be cut out for such a thankless job