Hello, everyone! I hope this all finds you well and that you’re all hanging in there through these tough times. I mostly lurk here but every blue moon, I post (mostly about the discontent for my job). Let me preface this by stating that I am a registered nurse, I’ve been one for 14 years and work a PRN position in home health. I love the aspects of my job, like caring for my patients, being a source of positivity and kindness for them and their families, watching them recover and progress, it’s very rewarding. I enjoy using my mind and the critical thinking skills required to do the job so it’s not the job itself but the office politics that come with it. For the most part, I’m out on my own and don’t have to get involved in the drama and gossip. It’s just the way I feel when I do have to interact with some of my coworkers, it leaves me feeling anxious and irritated.
The biggest complaint is that this company can not keep employees. I’ve seen about a 60-70% turnover rate in just one year. They overload us with patients and keep taking on more that they don’t even have the staff to properly cover (this is a HUGE problem in healthcare everywhere)! They are constantly holding useless meetings that I refuse to attend because I’m PRN, I just fill in the schedule as needed and don’t receive benefits or retirement like everyone else. I’m constantly on call, even days I didn’t agree to, I will get calls from the answering service. Then, when I refuse to pick up because it’s not my turn to cover it, I’ll get texts from management where I have to set them straight and bust out screenshots to confirm that I wasn’t to cover these days.
On top of this, we have 2 RNs (I’m one of those 2) and 1 LPN to cover an entire agency. It’s too much! Our poor LPN often has 10+ patients per day, which is absolutely dangerous! The company wants that profit though so they absolutely refuse to turn down new patients and this jeopardizes our nursing licenses on the daily.
The thing that pushed me over the edge is that our scheduler and I had a little quarrel via text today when one of our patients could not and did not want me to start his care today. I contacted the office to let them know this and get texts back from our scheduler blaming me for putting them in a bad position because they don’t have anyone to see him the next two days (I can’t reschedule to see patient tomorrow or the next day because I work at my other job). How is this my problem? So when I reply and state that the patient does not want a visit today, I gets couple rude/belittling texts back. I’m so sick of this shit… would you quit if you were me?