Working blues

Work has sure caused some undue stress lately. For a time, there was uncertainty about whether I would actually be going to the day shift, as people on midnights keep quitting, having personal tragedies, or surgeries. While I am desperate to join the land of the living and function as a normal person with waking and sleeping hours that mimic the majority of the working world, I am also afraid for my co-workers on the night shift.

Not only does working short-handed bring down staff morale, but the system of moving people to days has a small flaw. Generally, the list is formed with seniority providing priority to those who wish to switch shifts. However, this leaves many inexperienced nurses behind by default. Recently, we've had an influx of new grads (those that graduated in May, oriented on days during the summer, and transitioned to nights a month or so ago). As a group, they are very hard-working, intelligent, and caring individuals. Nonetheless, when they have questions, they need a resource to turn to for answers. Therein lies the problem. In general, the resources have been relocated to the day shift. Though I'm flattered that I am considered a "seasoned" nurse after a short year of experience in the MICU, it also says a lot about the potential dangers involved in patient care when this is the case.

Additionally, I was becoming quite irritated with the inconsistent answers I was getting about whether my schedule would, in fact, change to days, being that the new schedule wasn't out, but would start in a weeks time. So, I went to talk to my manager. Apparently, I must have come across pretty strongly, as she thought I would quit if I didn't get day shift. So, day shift it is. Though the thought of transferring had crossed my mind, I figured it wasn't worth the hassle to find a new position and go through orientation, only to be on maternity leave in February. So now I'm feeling guilty about the assertiveness and what that means for the night shift. I certainly didn't intend for things to work out this way. Bummer.

In addition, last week I had a rather frustrating experience with a patient. I cared for a 21 year old with cerebral palsy. He was about the size of a 2 year old, and truly belonged in the Pediatric Intensive Care unit as we simply don't have the equipment readily available to suit his needs. However, the PICU was full, or short nurses, so he was in the MICU. I spent half my night just gathering the right size of equipment (blood pressure cuffs, needles for starting IV's, drawing blood gases, etc.) and adjusting my expectations for blood pressure measurement, urine output, heart rate, etc. for pediatric guidelines. I have to admit, it was nice to care for a small person. When it came to repositioning and moving him, since he was so small, it didn't hurt my back and I could do it myself.

This experience was a slight wake up call that nursing school was, in fact, a year ago and there is stuff I'm surprised I remember, and stuff I'm afraid I've forgotten. It also reminds me that there are other types of nursing out there which pique my interest. The longer I stay in an adult ICU setting, I wonder if it would be more challenging to enter these new areas later down the road.