To date, I'm over 15 years into my career in nursing. Has it really been that long? I guess it has. Sometimes it feels like it has, sometimes it doesn't. I've been here in northern Arizona working as a nurse for about five years now, which is actually the longest I've stayed at any one nursing position since I started this career. It's weird to think that I've spent most of my nursing career moving from job to job, rarely staying anywhere for much longer than 6 months at a time.
I consider myself lucky that I chose a profession that not only allows me the flexibility to pursue a lot of different career paths in the healthcare setting, but also pays me well enough to have a lot of free time to enjoy my lifestyle outside of it. I'm grateful that I chose this profession all those years ago when I was a terrified little freshman living away from home for the very first time. My heart wasn't initially in the schooling, as I had always wanted to work with animals, but I was interested enough in nursing to know that I might actually be good at it, and that eventually, I would learn to like it. I'm so glad that it all worked out. And truth be told, not only did I learn to like nursing, I actually grew to love it quite a bit. It turned out to be a really good fit for me, and it's given me the flexibility and the income to live a life that makes me truly happy.
This summer, after working full-time for 15 years, I decided to change my position from a full-time charge nurse to a part-time floor nurse on a completely different nursing unit. It took me a long time and a lot of soul searching and long conversations with friends and coworkers to come to this decision to switch my position. Prior to this change, I had been a charge nurse for 2 years, and a member of the same nursing unit for about 4 and a half years. Being a charge nurse is a tough role to be in. I was basically the overseer of the flow of the unit for 12 hours at a time; that flow included the staffing of nurses and nurse assistants, the patients, and the comings and goings of ancillary staff. I had to make sure that the nurses working with me were supported, that they were getting their work done, and that the patients were receiving the best care possible. I was responsible for staffing and unit flow, and filling in for those ancillary services that aren't available at night. I can't tell you the number of times I had to push a patient in their giant hospital bed down to CT or Xray in the middle of the night (whilst leaving my staff behind), sometimes emergently, sometimes not. I've cleaned floors, I've made beds, I've couriered blood products, I've gone from unit to unit in search of equipment, I've spent hours on the phone trying to reach family members, Xray technicians, and doctors, I've taken patient assignments in addition to my charge nurse role so my staff wasn't overburdened. All of those things were mostly just tasks, and while they stacked up at times, I knew that was all part of it when I accepted the charge nurse role.
People are not at their best when they're sick and in the hospital. The hospital is rarely, if ever, a destination people want to go, let alone plan for. I don't care how many consultants the hospital brings in to talk to us, a hospital will never be the Ritz Carlton or Disneyland. When they start giving people enemas before getting on Splash Mountain (horrible idea, by the way), or requiring them to disrobe in front of total strangers and be subjected to all manner of unpleasantries before being escorted to their hotel rooms, then maybe we can start drawing some comparisons between Disneyland and/or the Ritz and the hospital setting. However, we're strongly encouraged to treat patients as though they are at the Ritz or Disneyland, and over the years, the patients have come to expect that as well. Patients are actually no longer patients, they are clients or customers, and the customer is always right, even if the customer has no medical knowledge whatsoever. So not only are we required to use the best of our nursing judgement to ensure a safe recovery for each and every patient, we are also expected to provide customer service at a level that isn't always conducive to the sometimes unpleasant and uncomfortable course of recovery. I can't take away someone's pain by offering them a free night's stay; I can't change 50 years of bad habits and the medical maladies and subsequent treatments that go along with them by offering them a free meal or a ride to the airport; it doesn't make them feel special to know that they're first in line for a trip to the CT scanner (and then having to redact that statement due to an emergency). In short, you can't placate illness.
It's stressful trying to provide appropriate medical care when dealing with the stress of placating people who don't like being uncomfortable, which is understandable. Where that fell back on me, as a charge nurse, is I was frequently being summoned and berated for things that were completely out of my control. Be it staff-to-staff interactions, staff-to-patient interactions, department-to-department interactions, patient-to-doctor interactions, or nurse-to-doctor interactions, I was frequently put in the position of having to calm the waters, all while voraciously having to justify maintaining the staff level that was best for optimal patient care. In short, it was a lot of stress and it was starting to take a toll on me. I think most people see me as a no-nonsense person who can brush most things off relatively easily, but the truth is that I'm very sensitive to negativity. I was struggling more than ever with maintaining a positive outlook amidst the negativity around me. I felt that as a charge nurse, my positive interactions with those around me were becoming fewer and fewer. I just didn't want to hear it anymore...the complaints, the grumbling, the dissatisfaction, the animosity; worst of all, I felt powerless to make the changes necessary to improve it. I just wanted to go to work and take care of my patients and if a situation arose, I wanted to be the one to passing it up the chain of command, rather than the one receiving it.
There was a part of me that stayed too long in my charge nurse position because I felt like I was abandoning my post. There is a lot of guilt and hurt feelings that go along with moving to a new position, even though I wasn't actually leaving the hospital environment. Several people called me a traitor when they found out I was thinking about leaving, and while their comments were made in jest, there was a part of me that took them to heart, which made me doubt my decision even more. My former boss and I had a conversation about this several months ago, and he made the comment that I'm completely replaceable. He didn't say it to belittle me, he said it because he knew how much stress it was causing me to think about my position being empty and the work that would go into replacing me. I know it's not easy to find experienced nurses in this town; nurses are constantly coming and going for a multitude of reasons. At the end of the day though, he was right; I am completely replaceable. There are plenty of nurses in our hospital that have just as much, if not more experience than I do. There are several of them who are more than qualified and would be happy to take my place, and would probably bring a fresh perspective to the work environment. That's the piece that I should have been thinking about months ago when I finally admitted to myself that I just wasn't happy where I was anymore. I wasn't staying for me; I was staying for these worries that I had in my head that turned out to be mostly unfounded.
One of my very good friends and someone who I respect very much put some things in perspective for me as I was going through this change. She's been working for the same employer for almost 15 years now. She told me that the key to her staying with her company and still liking her job is that she's moved into different positions about every two years or so. She said she thinks it's important to have new faces, new responsibilities, and a new environment to keep things fresh, interesting, and sometimes even exciting. We all know those people who hate their jobs but have been at them for so long that they're comfortable enough to stay there until the bitter end, complaining every day about how unhappy they are. They're everywhere, and they're difficult to be around. I saw myself becoming one of them. I thought there was something wrong with me, that there was something wrong with nursing, that maybe it wasn't the career for me anymore. It's hard for us to be honest when it comes to deciding how much of ourselves we should sacrifice for our jobs. I think it turns out that I didn't need to sacrifice anything; I just needed a change of scenery.
So this change? The one I was so scared to make and agonized over for months? It was super easy. I got a new boss, a new nursing unit, a whole new set of coworkers, a schedule that I could more or less control, and the transition was incredibly smooth. Since I'm scheduled for less shifts overall, one of the things that I've liked the most is that I can pick up shifts for other nurses in the hospital who need a day off. So not only do I feel good about helping a patient through their recovery, I feel good about helping a coworker to attend their daughter's soccer game or their husband's graduation from college or to start their much-needed vacation a day or two early. It's helped me to have an additional positive association with going to work, which is what I so desperately needed. I miss my former coworkers, but I still get to see them outside of work, and I'm still able to work shifts on my former unit. I think I'm a much easier person to be around now, and I feel bad that there were people who I like and respect who had to be there to see and experience my struggles and my low points. I guess that's how it goes. I hope that moving forward I can be a source of support for my fellow coworkers when and if they experience the same sort of struggles that I was having.
If you're reading this and you're feeling some or even a lot of the same feelings I had, know that you're not alone. There are so many people out there living their lives day to day, afraid or unable to make changes to their current situation despite the fact that a little change might make a huge difference. Sometimes it takes a leap to gain an inch, and taking the leap is frequently the hardest part of all. With the right support and a little bit of grit, you can do it. :)
