Oh, Nurse!

I have been a nurse since the age of 18 and am going into my 35th year(do the math) I started as LPN and now I am a masters prepared Nurse Practitoner actively working in a large upstate NY hospital and am happy and fufilled. Nursing is not as easy as it sounds.Many men & women who choose it as a second career are floored when they graduate and have to work shifts,weekend,holidays and sometimes doubles.
We don't get plasma TV's,vacations etc... please show me where these hospitals are and I bet they are short staffed and even that can't retain these nurses. May I make a suggestion... pay a decent wage to keep the expeienced nurses. Most leave to work in clinics,offices to get away from the tough hospital nursing (Most gladdly take less pay). Nursing is hard work and usually you start out at about $38,000 a year if you are lucky.Soon you will need to obtain a BSN in order to work if legislation has it's way.
Oh but you never have to worry about a job. Tell that to the nurses that are being laid off. Sure you may find another job but pay usually worse or hours stink.Sorry for being such a ney sayer here but nursing is not for everyone. And if you think "I'll just land me a doctor" good luck with that one!!!

"And if you think "I'll just land me a doctor" good luck with that one!!!"...LMAO! Unless they want an Indian dude who is 4'11" tall.

This is the beginning of cycle. Employers offer gimmicks and crap wages....no one takes. Then these hospitals go to crying their Senators about trying, but failing, to find qualified individuals, they cry about how it's a threat to the economy and then throw in some good old scare tactic like being under staffed during a terrorist attack. "Well what should we do?" asks the Senator..."We need special visas for hospital nurses because we cant find any!"..."Well you make a nice contribution to my reelection committee and I'll see what I can do....the American worker knows the end of this story.

HARD WORK, LONG WORK WEEKS, HAVE BEEN AN RN SINCE 1982, AM RETIRED NOW. I BELIEVE THE OVERALL PAY IS DECENT AND WOULD RECOMMEND THIS PROFESSION TO HS GRADS & UNEMPLOYED PERSONS LOOKING FOR A RECESSION
PROOF SKILL.

I'm an RN, and agree with all the above. Painting a pretty picture gets people into the programs, then reality hits them, and they run. If they stay, their dedication is "rewarded" with doubles, mandatory shifts, politics and abuse. Marry a doctor? Criminy, after a few months, you can't STAND the arrogant fools, much less imagine "landing one"! LOL!

And no, I've never been offered anything like a car. Vacations? When do they let you take those? Certainly not after starting work...

I do love my work now, having found my "niche," but I would never ever try to encourage someone to get into it for the perks and pay. Try computer work, computers can't throw things at you, sue you, or expel various bodily fluids on you!

I worked in hospitals for 25 years as a Radiologic Technologist. So I like to believe that I have a clear perspective of the woeful employment practices of a good number of institutions. Hospitals have had a long sorry history of poor management. They have never treated employees as well as private corporations treat their employees. While starting salaries were/are used by hospitals as inducements to gain professional staff to fill vacancies the high turnover rate opens as many positions as new staff fill. Hospitals pay only lipservice to creating working environments that will retain staff. They actually encourage turnover by having few long term benefits and horrible work overload conditions coupled with mandatory work hours that nobody cares to work for an extended period of time. Adding to the miserable work environment hospitals rarely control the behavior of their Physicians who often don't extend professional courtesy to anyone other then another Physician. Yes doctors are often frustrated by staff inablility to get the work done with high quality and in a timely manner. Taking their frustration out on employees has not in the past nor now solved the many systemic problems. They should be yelling at the corporate people who run their institution or risk their own job by going public with their complaints. In summary: From both a monetary and working condition standpoint hospitals actively chase away employees. Nothing new about it. Little has changed during the past 30 years.

I have been an RN for 12 yrs and have worked in several different areas of healthcare. I wish I could receive a car for my troubles. When our new crop of nursing students enter the NEW WORLD of nursing they are met with one of two senarios, either they are eaten alive by tired, overworked,underpaid nurses, that should be teaching them but just want to be left alone so that they might get luck and complete their work in 12 to 14 hours so they can come back and do it again the next day OR these bight, wide eyed nursing students are smarter that they act and see the over worked and under paid mentors and run for the hills. There is no easy solution.
We must keep trying to harvest our crop and then we will be just like every other work field, just lucky to have a job with no cars or vacations, or sign on bonuses.
I love my profession most of the time. If we remember its all about caring and not politics.

"I love my profession most of the time. If we remember its all about caring and not politics."

Posted by: debi hall | Jan 6, 2009 1:57:55 PM

Dear Debi: "Loving" your profession won't pay your bills. "Caring" about your patients is very noble but given the long hours you must work it does not allow you to give equal "care" to your husband and children. Your employer is all about making money and politics. Your hospital wants to get the most work it can out of you (without concern for the quality of care delivered or your near future burnout)while paying you as little as is possible. Your happy hospital administrator works a 40 hour week, no weekends, no holidays, is paid a bonus for keeping costs down and profits up and is paid a six figure salary. Who is more valued: you or your hospital administrator? Who is the professional....you or your hospital administrator? I suggest to you that by any measure you are not considered a professional. Oh you are called a professional but words are cheap. They are intended to keep you happy while offering you little in the way of compensation commensurate with what a "professional" would receive. If you think I am too harsh please look up the definition of "professional" in Oxfords New World Dictionary.