Night Shift Discouragements

"It takes a special kind of person to be a nurse." 

 Huh. I must be that kind of person then. It has been 18 years, and I'm still in. I went back to nursing in August part-time to supplement my income because the specific medical copy editing job I took did not pay well in comparison with nursing. On October 1st, regretfully, I left the editing/advertising job altogether and went back to being a night shift nurse full-time.On the whole, it was a good experience because I discovered that I was very good at something. My parting thoughts are that there is corporate exploitation and personal competition everywhere. If I go back to that work, I expect to be payed the going rate for my experience and skill, and I will be careful to work with those who understand what that skill requires.

You know, there really isn't that much good reading out there for night shift nurses. Many articles focus on students. Light-hearted blogs and articles give the same statistical rundowns, and it is not helpful. There are a lot of studies that tell us discouraging statistics. We're going to get more fat. We're going to be depressed. Our family life will suffer. We will get into car accidents on the way home, and will die or become permanently disabled. The administration will not see us, and so will not care about us. When they do see us, it will nearly always be for a negative reason.

The truth is, I am 51, and my idealistic days are long over. The aspirations I had fresh out of nursing school have met many brick walls of reality. At the grocery store parking lot, I walk across empty handicapped spaces after work, on my way in to buy groceries - and wine - at 8am, and my gut instinct tells me to walk around the blue paint as if it is a grave. I defiantly walk across it. No superstition is going to mame me. I took care of those people all night. I am allowed to walk across the blue paint. Out of respect. They are my charges.

The past two years have been a little heartbreaking for me. I have 15 or so years before retirement. I was only going to be a nurse for 5 years. I was going to work in pediatrics or OB. I was going to move on to another career. My honesty, my hard work, and my integrity would see me through. Not so, all of it. Do not let that part of you jump out and say, "But..." because I get that I am worthy. That is not what I am talking about here. 

The nursing profession does not work in that way. It is a problem that I care. It is a problem that I have integrity. It is a problem that I work hard, and am thorough. It is a problem for all of the wrong reasons, and it always will be one. I am pretty certain that any night shift nurse who has been a nurse for five years or more who is reading this will understand. Corporate interests and ethics do not mesh in a good way. They pay lip service, and they like to think they do, but they just don't. For the rest, I am not going to explain, because I am just too plain tired, after 18 years, of trying to make things better. Things are worlds worse, for everyone in a hospital or a skilled facility, than they were when I started. Nearly everything I have done to try to improve things has backfired on me, mostly in the form of others' need for self-preservation. No matter how one avoids finger-pointing, someone always feels pointed at. I do too, even when I try not to. After a 12 hour shift, when you are bone tired, that is when the day shift staff comes in, and wants to talk with you about all kinds of shit (excuse my language, but I earned the right to use it), and has a list of charting for you to fix, and you just want to go home and go to bed. That is just the way it is.You did a lot of things wrong.

I find this extremely sad. I have heard, "It is getting better," and "It is going to get better," so, so, so many times; and have watched it get worse instead, so, so, so many times. 

What keeps me there is the faces of the people I have cared for, and their families. And money. It is not just the paycheck though, but the paycheck is certainly a big part of it. Faces keep me from quitting. I see them. They wake me up at night.

There is supposedly a way to go about nursing, and to go about improving things. I have found this to be mostly false. We try, and that is all. Hope is ever in our favor. I work with some excellent nurses. Some of them do not think that I think this of them (that they are excellent), because I am sometimes a little light on the compliments and heavy on the complaining. Most nurses are the same way. 

This is not a disillusionment. This is an attempt to discuss the reality that has gone on now for 18 years, and to not sugar-coat it. Sugar becomes pretty icky after too much of it.