Nursing is the worst career in the world…..air force to male nurse
Before I was a nurse I was in the Air Force. I did it for 20 years. After I left my Air FOrce career I felt like I wanted to help people.I was a highly trained Air Force Operations guy. I figured I was in wars, had done alot of stressful shit in my day. A real mans man. Now I feel like I am a beat down old used up worthless human.
Let me tell you my story and if you cant see my point then you are surely blind or are not a nurse. Well, one day I was in the Air Force. Wearing a flight suite. Getting laid. taveling the world. Basically, getting treated like royalty because I was an aviator. Well, I retire and go to the VA to apply for educational benefits. I have no formal training that can be transferred to civilian life. I have a wife to support. So I go talk to the VA guy. He makes me take this battery of tests. The next thing I know he says. Have you ever thought about nursing? I think to myself. HMMMM. Is this guy serious? So i take some pamphlets for the local college. I apply and get accepted. I have the GI bill it pays for nearly all my classes. THings are pretty good. I like the University classes and the atmosphere of a big campus. I struggled through the science classes I have to get tutors and study sometimes 16 hoursa day but i get through.
Finally, clinicals come. Im happier than a clam. FInally I see the light at the end of the tunnel. I do great in most of my clinicals. I love my instructors and they love me. Then its time for peds. I here the other students talking. You know, “WHatever you do, dont take proffesor so and so because she is harsh or doesnt understand…..” I am like, heck. Im a hard worker and can handle it. SO I pick this rotation with this proffesor with a bad reputation. She is known to send home students for showing up late for clinicals. Also, she is known for being a bra burning man hater. But I have had her in lecture and she seems easy to get along with. SO i decide that I can handle it.
ANyway, clinical goes good for the first week. Then she overhears me talking to some of my female classmates. We are all good buddies. I am joking in the Student Union with some female clssmates. We did get a little “off color”. But we were buds. Anyway, things go shitty. She pulls me aside and tells me thatshe doesnt like the way I was talking to the female students. I was receptive and told her that I would watch it in the future. I was given the most difficult patients in the fricking hospital. I was beaten down and scrutinized way beyond what the other female students were. So i dropped the class and retook. The warning signs should have gone up then but they didnt.
I figured this was just a bad experience. ANyway, I have no further trouble making it through. The rest of the instructors were kool. But I look back now to the sights and sounds of the floors during my clinicals. THey were all short on staff. Most of the nurses were the walking dead. They were working 12s or more. SOme with no weekends off. “Mandatory overtime” I saw this one nurse go ballistic on the floor and just stand up and scream and then just break down and cry. She had her head in her hands. “I cant take this anymore.” She was prostrate. Crying sobbing. My instructor was standing with all of our little student nurses. I said, “Why dont you go over and talk to her.” She said, “THat nurse is a discipline problem. Im going to make sure she is gone by the end of the day.”
She went to the nearest phone and called the Nurse Administrator. THe nurse admin came down and sternly said, “go to your locker and get your stuff. Ill get your time card. I want you out of this building now.” No one acknowledged her, No one put a hand on this poor womens shoulder. She couldnt have been over 35 but she looked like she was 100. Where was the compassion for our own here? Anyway, this should have awoken me to this hell. BUt is didnt. So I graduate and think hmmmmmm. I will try circulating. Those ORs are like assembly lines. Backstabbing, backbiting. Hate. No compassion to the staff. No understanding that we are not robots. I get burned out and try another line of nursing. Still, they hate eachother. I tried several times to get the nuses together for a beer or to shoot pool. But we are so damned tired. I mean BONE NUMBInG EMOTIONALY DEAD TIRED. No one wants to. BEsides, Ive seen the females set there and backstabeach other. whispering to each other at the charting station. “That Bitch. She thinks she is so damned hot…etc etc etc. Then the next minute they are with the “bitch” and talking about their husbands and giggling. I pissed off my supervisor one day for losing my tempor.
I quit. Now I am just fed up. I have no idea what the future holds for me. I was a nurse for 4 years. I dont want anything to do with it anymore. What is all this crap about it being a proffesion. Heck, we get trated like meat. I worked in a hospital that wouldnt give staff nurses raises unless they took classes, or did some other “self improvement” BS. We couldnt because we were so damned tired and we had families who needed us. They wouldnt give us a raise. Nurses were quitting left and right because of this but they would pay all of these travelors nearly double our saleries plus room and board. I never understood this. On some days there were 50% travelors. Hell, Id rather suck shit through a straw then be a nurse.
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I suggest if someone is considering entering the Nursing Profession, they need to look within themself & ask if they can accept the responsibility of this wonderful Profession.
Nursing blows!!
-male RN
I see by your "story" you are one of the many that don't understand what being a Nurse really means. Like yourself, many have entered the Nursing Profession lately for all the wrong reasons. I truly believe it is a calling, not just a job someone may think they will try or because it's in demand & they think it's a quick easy buck. I have been a Nurse for 32 years & my husband one for 15. I always knew I wanted to take care of people, it was a second nature to me. I've been around long enough to do all the crap jobs, but caring for people, no matter where they are...ICU, Long Term Care, Newborn Nursery.... is innate & you either have it or you don't.
I suggest if someone is considering entering the Nursing Profession, they need to look within themself & ask if they can accept the responsibility of this wonderful Profession.
I don't have to read your entire comment to feel for you. I'm not a nurse but I feel like shit all the time too. I don't mean to sound cold, but get over it friend. I've worked for the Army for the last nine years and I'm tired too. Back-track to Air Force and it's seventeen years. The work is fairly easy. It's the cronyism, apathy and abuse that's tiring. The WORLD does this to us. So I'll repeat... GET OVER IT. No one in the military CARES!!!
A calling to what? The gates of HELL.
No. A mental and physical breakdown, plus an early death.
I see by your "story" you are one of the many that don't understand what being a Nurse really means. Like yourself, many have entered the Nursing Profession lately for all the wrong reasons. I truly believe it is a calling, not just a job someone may think they will try or because it's in demand & they think it's a quick easy buck. I have been a Nurse for 32 years & my husband one for 15. I always knew I wanted to take care of people, it was a second nature to me. I've been around long enough to do all the crap jobs, but caring for people, no matter where they are...ICU, Long Term Care, Newborn Nursery.... is innate & you either have it or you don't.
I suggest if someone is considering entering the Nursing Profession, they need to look within themself & ask if they can accept the responsibility of this wonderful Profession.
Sounds like a shitty time with a capital Shit. I've been a Murse for quite a while and it got a lot better after the first three years. I now have a sweet job, work with mostly men so the bitchy backstabbing shit isn't as frequent. I don't blame you for a second for leaving. I think I just got lucky or something. My job is so cool I actually don't mind overtime and I do do clinical hands on nursing if any naysayers are wondering. If you do go back t nursing give the ED a try, you might find it a little more satisfying and the nurses down there usually are too busy to be bitchy to each other,,OR NOT.
DON'T TAKE IT PERSONAL!
Serious guys/girls, what the hell, if someone wants to talk behind someone elses back, screw it, who gives a rats ass? Hell you can even have fun with it like do some very odd action that will not compromise your employment but really get people talking about you, I have put myself in tear of laugher doing this, you should try it, but don't tell a soul what and why you are doing it.
Additionally, screw being a staff nurse, agency is where it's at baby! I learned real quick in my career this point. When I first started, I noticed that during the tax season all the nurses were chit chatting at the nurses station about what they pulled in during the last tax year. Average staff nurse = $ 50 K Average agency = $ 100K Oh, but then you'll get the whole "Oh, but staff gets benefits!" LOL, what a load of crap, YOU REALLY BELIEVE THIS!
Good God, think about the mutual funds/bonds/CD's and health insurance that you could buy OF YOUR CHOICE with and extra $50K
Here is just an FYI for the nurse that believes that nursing sucks (which it does, but all jobs essentially suck so . . .) If the institution that you are employed at or are considering employment at has a lot of agency nurses or has 12 hours shifts, don't consider employment there! Why???? Cuz 12 hour shifts should be an option, not a mandation. 12 hours shifts were created, because the institution can employ less nurses (cuz no one wants to work there for whatever reason, but get the job there and you will see why shortly after) Hypothetically speaking: why would a hospital pay a agency nurse $50/hour and a staff nurse $25/hour? BECAUSE THE PLACE SUCKS and has trouble finding and keeping staff, what other reason is there? ??? there is a bizarre influx of pt's??? Come on people, open your eyes, it is never too late to learn.
I am riding a gravy train here! Man, I sing and dance for my patients while giving the best nursing care anyone has to offer. Yeah, they think I am crazy, but they love every second of it, and request me everyday they are there, they drive for hours back to the hospital after they are "released into the wild" just to give me gifts and food. Hmmm, no one else that I work with seems to get these gifts. Wonder why? Because most of them are apathetic, complacent, hum-drum, hate their lives, hate their jobs, hate themselves, hate their pt's people.
Guys, you can make a killing in this profession while having a hell of a time doing it. First, don't kill yourself doing 12's unless your like myself and have had serious crappy jobs before. Second, it is where you live, not the profession. Example: I would choose to live anywhere in the south, than somewhere in the North like MN, WI, IA, ND, SD, etc. Sorry if I offend anyone, but those peeps are butt heads! I lived up there for one year, and I felt like committing harry carry, even the supposed sweet little old ladies were a bunch of @)#%*. I wouldn't take a nursing job up there in the summer for $100 an hour! Come down south, maybe even to the dirty south, you will find Southern comfort here that you will definately appreciate! Hey, it is worth a try, don't let your nursing career be a sunk cost. Roll wit it baby, do what feels natural! And everyday say this prayer "God help me be the man my dog thinks I am!"
-the Great White Big Nasty-
$20,000 bonus.
SSgt Bernstein
www.myspace.com/airforcenursing
Former Army Captain and current Medical Student
I see by your "story" you are one of the many that don't understand what being a Nurse really means. Like yourself, many have entered the Nursing Profession lately for all the wrong reasons. I truly believe it is a calling, not just a job someone may think they will try or because it's in demand & they think it's a quick easy buck. I have been a Nurse for 32 years & my husband one for 15. I always knew I wanted to take care of people, it was a second nature to me. I've been around long enough to do all the crap jobs, but caring for people, no matter where they are...ICU, Long Term Care, Newborn Nursery.... is innate & you either have it or you don't.
I suggest if someone is considering entering the Nursing Profession, they need to look within themself & ask if they can accept the responsibility of this wonderful Profession.
So yea, if you want to make easy money for no work, join a different field.
or even the whole of the Scottish operation .... why are these sites so crap ??
Many of us have said that there is more hate and viciousness in nursing than in any of our military training.
Nursing has gotten so bad because it is, for lack of a better term a "Bitch's Job". Most nurses are females who support an entire household and it's the furthest education they can attain. No female would bite the corrupt hand that feeds and let her family go hungry, so for generations we have taken it.
All of this "what it means to be a nurse" is designed to make overworked females feel better about their horrible jobs.
Florence Nightengale, who we are brainwashed to worship, was little more than a drug-crazed slut who decided to put two and two together.
I believe you had the nerve to post this because you are NOT a desperate female.
I think, instead of going to nursing school and letting megalomaniac instructors destroy what is left of her self-esteem, joining the military is a better option. At least you will be built back up after the basic training breaks you down.
People, who think about going to nursing, DON’T! For your own sake – DON’T! Everything that had been written in the first post is TRUE!!!!