Comments on: ONLY TWO DAYS LEFT….

By: reba

reba — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 14:53:03 +0000

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

By: shauna

shauna — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 06:47:04 +0000

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.

By: Midsummer Night (Listed as Fair Love above)

Midsummer Night (Listed as Fair Love above) — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 03:12:41 +0000

This was really interesting. I am just amazed at how many problems there are in the nursing field.

By: Susanna

Susanna — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 20:25:47 +0000

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.

By: Awesome Mom

Awesome Mom — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 17:20:09 +0000

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.

By: Deb

Deb — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 15:22:03 +0000

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!