greywolf Posted October 7, 2014 Author Share Posted October 7, 2014 Sometimes I get very frustrated with my family, especially my mom, because I feel like they don't know how to communicate. It's kind of upsetting for me to be talking to my mom and be thinking, "She communicates like a child!" My sister and my mom got into a fight today and my sister said that it ended with her just leaving, and then my mom later tried to get her to talk more about it, and my sister flat out refused. So what happened next? She called me. This has been happening a lot lately where they get into a fight with each other, and then they both call me; usually at right about the same time. And it's to complain to me about the other person. My sister calls to tell me about the fight and how pissed off she is. And my mom calls me because my sister has basically cut her off from the argument but my mom can't accept not being able to get her 2 cents in, so I have to get it instead. I was basically on the phone for her for 30 minutes and she was defending herself from the things my sister had to said to her to me. TO ME! Why do I care? Tell my sister! It's like she needs to be right so much that she can't just stop arguing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greywolf Posted October 7, 2014 Author Share Posted October 7, 2014 So you are going back to Cali? Yeah. I haven't been doing that well lately. I made a mistake at work a week or so ago and that was kind of a wake up call for me that I need to get out of here. Sometimes I feel dangerous on the unit. =/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hers Posted October 7, 2014 Share Posted October 7, 2014 What is your plan when you get back? Try to stop in my town again so we can maybe have lunch! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greywolf Posted October 7, 2014 Author Share Posted October 7, 2014 What is your plan when you get back? Try to stop in my town again so we can maybe have lunch! This plan isn't set in stone yet, but I think I'm just going to turn in my one month resignation notice already and start looking for a hospital job back home. If I don't find one by the time I get back, I can just go into home health or hospice (I have connections in that I know I can get temp jobs there) until I find a hospital to hire me. It shouldn't be a problem now because I've got experience. I'm not sure what I'm going to do yet about all my stuff. =/ I think I'm just going to sell my furniture here if I can, but I have other stuff that I want to take home that won't fit in my car. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
annie24 Posted October 7, 2014 Share Posted October 7, 2014 I shipped some of my stuff cross country with greyhound. You can pack boxes and they will ship it. That's an option. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greywolf Posted October 8, 2014 Author Share Posted October 8, 2014 I shipped some of my stuff cross country with greyhound. You can pack boxes and they will ship it. That's an option. The two things I'm most worried about is a bicycle and a piano keyboard. Do they do big items like that? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
annie24 Posted October 8, 2014 Share Posted October 8, 2014 eh, i wouldn't trust them with that. but if you want to send other things like clothes and bedding, I'd do that. Can you rent one of those small trailer hitches? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
renaissancewoman101 Posted October 8, 2014 Share Posted October 8, 2014 You can also use a company called UPack. They come and drop off a container and then you load up the container yourself. They then come back, pick up the container, load up a truck and meet you at your destination. Only caveat is that you have to load and unload the container yourself. When I moved back to CA from WI, I hired a moving company. They moved my stuff and I drove out here with my important stuff in the car (important papers, pets, stuff that I didn't want on the truck). Good luck. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greywolf Posted October 8, 2014 Author Share Posted October 8, 2014 I'll look into those suggestions. Thanks. Does anyone know what's a fair price to sell my used furniture at? Half off? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greywolf Posted October 9, 2014 Author Share Posted October 9, 2014 Now that I've made the decision to leave, I feel a little sad about it lol. Sometimes when I drive through town, I just think about how I'll miss the quietness, and my neighborhood. I live in a nice little golfing community within walking distance to my job. There's a park within walking distance that has a lake with a little island in the middle of it and bridge so you can walk out to it. I always though that if I decided to get married in Florida, that's where I would get married lol. It'd be so much cheaper too. And all the lakes. I think those are beautiful. Definitely not something you see in California. Sometimes I wish I could live where I am right now, but have the luxury of LA being right nearby lol. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greywolf Posted October 30, 2014 Author Share Posted October 30, 2014 I think I've said it before, but I feel like I'm coming close to the point of hating patients. Every once in awhile I meet a nice patient and it makes me remember why I love what I do, but that happens so infrequently. The rest of the time, I feel like I'm a glorified waitress trying to keep ungrateful people from trying to kill themselves. It's so incredibly frustrating sometimes. I think I just need to move into ICU where patients can't talk. *sigh* Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
annie24 Posted October 31, 2014 Share Posted October 31, 2014 when people are sick and hurting, they're really not at their best, or most grateful or friendly. hang in there. when do you move? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greywolf Posted October 31, 2014 Author Share Posted October 31, 2014 when people are sick and hurting, they're really not at their best, or most grateful or friendly. hang in there. when do you move? It's not just that though. Usually when they start getting better is when they are more difficult to deal with. When they're feeling really ill, you can just do your job and take care of them. When they start getting better enough to be pressing their call light every 30 minutes, wanting juice and snacks even though their blood sugar has been all over the place, and feeling better enough to complain about every single thing, like not getting enough sleep, because we're awful people that just like to wake them up, then it gets frustrating. And everything that goes wrong is always the nurses' fault. We got low patient satisfaction scores last month, which affects the hospital's reimbursement rates (yes, our reimbursement is based on how fast we brought their juice to them that they wanted), and hospital management has decided it's because we use too many travel nurses on our unit (because travel nurses are not employed by the hospital and generally care less about customer service BS), and instead of management thinking that maybe they need to hire more core staff, what happened is that any of us who called in sick more than three times in the past year got written up for absenteeism. So, I was in the director's office last week getting written up for calling in sick four times in the last 12 month period. And it's ridiculous. It's not like nursing is a job where you can go to work while not feeling well and sort of just barely manage to get through the day. No, if you try to do that, you'll kill someone. So sometimes it's just very frustrating. Patients treat us like crap, management treats us like crap, doctors treat us like crap, and nurses are generally very crappy to each other as well (tbh, except for a very few nurses, the latter hasn't been my experience. I hear that other hospitals can get very bad though). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
annie24 Posted October 31, 2014 Share Posted October 31, 2014 you got written up for calling in sick??!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greywolf Posted October 31, 2014 Author Share Posted October 31, 2014 you got written up for calling in sick??!! Yeah. 64 of us got a written warning for absenteeism. Our policy is a verbal warning for 3 absences, a written warning for 4, and so on. It was never enforced before, but management has decided that they need to do something about our patient satisfaction scores, so of course, it falls on the nurses. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greywolf Posted October 31, 2014 Author Share Posted October 31, 2014 I went out for dinner with coworker today and I was telling him how I felt, and he said that I was having burnout. I dunno... I hate to admit it to myself that I might just be burnt out because I've only been in bedside for a year. I suppose it also doesn't help that I have pretty much no support network out here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
annie24 Posted October 31, 2014 Share Posted October 31, 2014 Yeah. 64 of us got a written warning for absenteeism. Our policy is a verbal warning for 3 absences, a written warning for 4, and so on. It was never enforced before, but management has decided that they need to do something about our patient satisfaction scores, so of course, it falls on the nurses. yeah, it's much better to cough all over your patient and make them sicker. good hospital policy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greywolf Posted November 6, 2014 Author Share Posted November 6, 2014 yeah, it's much better to cough all over your patient and make them sicker. good hospital policy. Yeah, I don't get it myself. And the reason they're doing it is because they think we'll get better patient satisfaction scores if we don't call off, so that we don't have to be replaced by agency nurses. The part that doesn't make sense though is that vacation pay and sick pay come out of the same pool. So I can use my paid days off for a vacation or for sick days. If I go on vacation, they're still going to have to get an agency nurse to cover for me! It's not like they're going to hire someone new just to cover for me while I'm on vacation. It makes no sense. I've been caring for a patient for the last 2 days with an awful nasty cough, and he wouldn't cover his mouth even though I kept reminding him to. Now I'm feeling like I might be coming down with something this morning. Grrr. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greywolf Posted November 6, 2014 Author Share Posted November 6, 2014 I went to bed and woke up all sweaty. I've got a fever. =( I called in sick, and I felt like my manager was upset. I hate that. They already scheduled me for extra shifts this month without asking me. Whatever. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tiredofvampires Posted November 8, 2014 Share Posted November 8, 2014 The situation sounds so demoralizing!! And the reimbursement system sounds really bad -- I mean, it seems to hinge completely on how entitled patients feel, and how spoiled and ungrateful they are. You're not their parents, you didn't teach them to be rude and demanding. I'm really sorry your work is feeling so thankless, when I know you must do a great job. Are you allowed to wear masks as a precautionary measure when a patient is coughing and sick? I really have to hand it to you...and all nurses...to be on the front lines all the time of putting your own health in harm's way. It's heroic. No exaggeration. Even if my immune system didn't suck, I don't think I could do it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greywolf Posted November 8, 2014 Author Share Posted November 8, 2014 The situation sounds so demoralizing!! And the reimbursement system sounds really bad -- I mean, it seems to hinge completely on how entitled patients feel, and how spoiled and ungrateful they are. You're not their parents, you didn't teach them to be rude and demanding. I'm really sorry your work is feeling so thankless, when I know you must do a great job. Are you allowed to wear masks as a precautionary measure when a patient is coughing and sick? I really have to hand it to you...and all nurses...to be on the front lines all the time of putting your own health in harm's way. It's heroic. No exaggeration. Even if my immune system didn't suck, I don't think I could do it. I did start to wear a mask on the second night that I had him, but I think it was too late. My hospital doesn't have a policy against it. I have heard that some hospitals don't allow it unless the patient is on isolation precautions. A long time ago, people rarely used gloves because they were thought to be so impersonal and insulting to patients, and then it shifted to always using gloves even just to shake a patient's hand, and now they're trying to get away from that and teaching nursing students to use gloves when necessary. I wouldn't really call it heroic lol. If we use proper isolation precautions, we shouldn't be at risk. It's more the stress of the job and the long hours that really take a toll on the body I think. I really do think that reimbursement based on patient satisfaction is ridiculous. There's a study that has come out that shows that happier patients are not healthier patients. It's hard to be honest to a patient and tell them that they need to lose weight or quit smoking and also worry about making them happy. Here are some articles on it: link removed link removed link removed A couple of quotes from these articles: A team of UC Davis researchers found that people who are the most satisfied with their doctors are more likely to be hospitalized, accumulate more health-care and drug expenditures, and have higher death rates than patients who are less satisfied with their care. Another physician in the audience told the crowd that he was able to increase his satisfaction score by 7% simply by prescribing an antibiotic to all patients who call with a complaint of cough, sore throat, or sinus headache. One doctor reported to the media that he had to give Dilaudid® for minor pain because his Press Ganey score was low the previous month. Doesn't that sound scary??? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
annie24 Posted November 8, 2014 Share Posted November 8, 2014 well, we have this bizarre triangular system in which the patient is not the payer, the insurance is. It's not like where you go to the restaurant, and if you don't like it, you don't go back there again. instead, you get insurance through your work (also stupid), and the person who is paying for the service is not the same as who receives it. Their idea to base the reimbursement on patient satisfaction is especially stupid. gah, all around. glad you are leaving that hospital. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greywolf Posted November 8, 2014 Author Share Posted November 8, 2014 well, we have this bizarre triangular system in which the patient is not the payer, the insurance is. It's not like where you go to the restaurant, and if you don't like it, you don't go back there again. instead, you get insurance through your work (also stupid), and the person who is paying for the service is not the same as who receives it. Their idea to base the reimbursement on patient satisfaction is especially stupid. gah, all around. glad you are leaving that hospital. I don't work in management or billing, so I'm not entirely sure how everything works, but as far as I'm aware, Medicare is the one that bases reimbursement on the satisfaction scores and the majority of our patients are elderly so our main source of payment is from Medicare, so every hospital is going to be like this, unfortunately. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greywolf Posted November 13, 2014 Author Share Posted November 13, 2014 So I got a call from a hospital yesterday evening. I was just starting to wake up and didn't answer the call. The caller called me right back, so I answered. Seriously, I find that annoying. You don't have to call me twice in a row. Just leave a message. It was the director of a hospital that a travel agency is trying to set me up with. He asked me if I had a couple of minutes to answer a few questions, and I thought, "Why not?" I can answer a few questions." So he asked me basic questions about what type of hospital I work at and what type of unit. Then he started asking me questions about medications. UGH. If I had known I was going to be quizzed on medications, I would have asked if he could call me at a better time. I was still all groggy. I was only familiar with 2 of the medications out of the 5 that he asked me about. So... I think I'm screwed with this place. UGH. I posted on another nursing forum asking if I was screwed, and people pretty much treated me like an idiot. I'm so sick of nurses sometimes. It's like no one knows how to be nice to each other. That's one of the reasons why I'm so scared to move to another hospital. Everyone at my hospital has been so great and nice to me, but I know that's rare in the hospital world.:sorrow: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
petite Posted November 13, 2014 Share Posted November 13, 2014 Do you think that perhaps nursing just isn't for you? Would you be happier in another profession? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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