Man oh man does work suck. I don't mean in general (although work in general does suck) - I mean my job. Right now. Fucking sucks. I am soooooo not happy at my job right now. And I'm not the only one. Lots of people are unhappy. There's lots of shit going on right now that's not good. Let's start from the top and trickle our way down, shall we?
My hospital organization, Centura, has been bought out by another entity called Common Spirit. Common Spirit seems to only be concerned with money. The bottom line. Not employees. Not patients. Money. There have been tons of cuts made - with food service, with housekeeping, with CNAs, with nurses. They want us running on a skeleton crew. Because they're trying to save money. Come January our benefits will probably be changing (I'm guessing not for the better). We were told no raises this year - not even cost of living. My direct manager quit. Our head of women's services (who was my manager's manager) quit. Our administrative assistant, who does about a million things for our unit, quit. My best friend is quitting. Managers on other units are quitting. Everyone is jumping ship. I loved my manager. She was amazing. I loved our head of women's services. She was amazing. I loved our administrative assistant. She was amazing. My best friend? Also amazing. It sucks so hard to see them go. And it makes one wonder - what did they know that I don't know?
We hired a new manager, one of our charge nurses who was also a clinical coordinator (basically assistant manager). Now, while I like her as a person, she is very much a "yes sir" type of person. She'll go along with and enforce whatever the higher ups are telling her. I don't see her standing up for our unit. Don't get me wrong - she's a damn hard worker - I just don't see her backing us up. This is worrisome to me.
Back to running on a skeleton crew. Our new "grid" (basically the guidelines on how to staff our unit) is tight. And the higher ups keep tightening it. We are no longer allowed to have CNAs. Now, our CNAs do a shit ton of work. And now, without them, this work is left to the nurses to do. So now we have our jobs to do, along with the jobs of the CNAs. Oh! And did I mention we have to do all our own lab draws now too? Because apparently its too much money to have phlebotomists on hand. We're also taking more patients than we were in the past. So now we have a heavier load while doing the jobs of three people. But here's the kicker - probably 3/4 of our nurses are NOT doing the CNA's jobs. Nope. They're relying on people like me (who works nursery) to do their portion of the CNA jobs. They're too lazy or "too good" to do these jobs (paperwork, cleaning cribs, stocking rooms, making coffee, cleaning up, doing baby baths). So they flat out don't do it. They figure that nursery or nursery backup should do it. Mind you, we have patients of our own to take care of while also attending deliveries (EVERY. SINGLE. DELIVERY.) and taking care of those babies (which is time consuming). Yesterday we did 10 deliveries on day shift - I barely had time to sit down, let alone worry about doing everyone else's jobs for them. I mean, what the actual fuck?? Most of these nurses don't realize what we do in nursery, how busy it is, and how much work it is. They just expect us to do everything. This is beyond frustrating. We need to work as a team and help each other out - NOT push off our work onto other people.
So now we have added work, we're not working as a team, and we're getting burnt out. What does this lead to? Sick calls. People are calling in sick because they're burnt out and tired. Which makes us even more short staffed. Yesterday we were down two nurses on mom/baby and we did 10 deliveries - we didn't have nurses to take those patients but we still had to. So everyone ends up with even more patients to take care of. We are stretched to the max. And it's like this Every. Single. Day. I'm so sick of it. I'm tired. I'm frustrated. I'm angry. And I'm so over it. Everyone is. Morale on the unit is at an all time low. It's a very negative space to be in. I'm so bitter and angry when I'm at work and I don't know how to fix it. I almost cried numerous times yesterday because I was so frustrated and overwhelmed. And again - this is every single day at work. We don't get a break. I hate it. I've been in the birth center for 15 years and I'm starting to hate it. A job I once loved. And I don't know how to fix it.
So. What do I do? I've thought about leaving, quitting. But I can't do that at least until December. Why? Because I had signed a two year contract for a monetary bonus. That contract isn't up until December. If I quit before then I have to pay back the money I received. And I can't afford to do that. So I'm stuck until at least December. And then I think, well, where would I go? What would I do? Our other major hospital system here, UC Health, isn't any better. It would probably be the same shit, different facility. The only other area I'm interested in working in is psych. But my psychiatrist and therapist and pretty much everyone I'm close to thinks inpatient psych would be a bad choice for me. Which, I can see that. I'd be seeing people at their absolute worst, giving them a bandaid, and sending them on their way. It would be stressful and possibly triggering. My therapist was suggesting working in an outpatient psych setting but I don't know what that would look like. My other problem is that I have to work day shift - I physically and mentally can't do night shift. I'll either become manic or suicidal. Those are not options I'm willing to face. So what the fuck do I do? I mean, for now I have to ride it out until December. But then what? I have no idea.
That's another thing that's going to suck - December. Because we're going to have nurses leave - which will leave us even more short staffed. I just don't even know what to do anymore. Thanks for coming to my Ted talk.
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