Originally Posted by
singingtothewheat
I had to read through all of these responses carefully. First of all, I'm a nurse on an extremely busy Orthopedic / Surgical floor. Having been a nurse for 17 years I'm not unfamiliar with really hard work but I can tell you that this position demands the very best of my skills, my knowledge, my ability to ask for help or clarification and so on. I am extremely fortunate, in that, our unit has a very strong core team of day nurses (TEAM being the most important part). We help each other!
My first response to the original post was "HMMMMMMPHHHH, You mean to tell me that the best, of the best, of the best are complaining when they are forced to come work with us. Give me a break".
However, upon thinking about it more, it would be hard for a nurse who's used to taking care of 1-2 patients (sometimes three?), to go to a floor where you have 4-8 patients. (For the record, I've never had 8 patients on my floor) What's doubly hard about that move is sometimes those 4-8 patients require nearly as much attention per patient as some I.C.U. patients (ok so it might not be the same sort of attention). The patients in I.C.U. are often so sick that they simply can't pose some of the difficulties that a floor patients care can. I.C.U. nurses also have less exposure to family members because of shortened visitor times. The I.C.U. at my hospital also seems to have alot more physician support.
It would be nice if none of us ever had to float but I say truthfully that I do not think this will EVER be a reality. Afterall, our job is to provide care to patients in need, not just patients in need on our unit.
The other issue in this is, as floor nurses we too, sometimes have to float to other floors. We don't like it much either. We don't know the routines, where the supplies are, who to go to, what some of the particular quirky Dr.'s quirks are and somehow we just trudge through.
The best thing we can do as a profession is treat one another with loving kindness and help one another. Be an example of this and maybe, just maybe someone will follow your lead.