What I thought/What I said

The interviewer asked, "What's making you want to leave your current job?"

I'm tired of watching my coworkers coming in, looking defeated.

I haven't had a sit-down lunch in six weeks. One of my coworkers weaned her baby early because she couldn't get anybody to relieve her so she could pump breastmilk.

Our acuity increased at the same time our director cut our staff, so there are delays in care that I find unacceptable.

We've been rebranded a "step-down" unit, so none of us will get critical-care raises or credit, but we're still taking CCU patients. We still float to the CCUs.

The attitude of the administration to our unit is "do more with less; you're nothing but big whiners." When the director brushed off legitimate concerns with the response that we were "jibber-jabbering," I died a little.

I showed up at six yesterday and started working immediately, because there were three admissions at once and none of the resources or help we were promised were available.

We're having falls and bad patient outcomes as a result of short-staffing, and we're getting disciplined for them.

I can't get a damn MRI statted because I can't find somebody who can monitor a patient on a drip in the tube.

Our manager refuses to back us up when things get dangerous.

The doctors I work with recognize the problem, as do the nurses in other departments, but still nothing is done.

I'm exhausted from not eating, not peeing, not taking a day off, and the rest of my life is suffering.

Although we stand in solidarity as a unit, the director is telling his bosses that there are a few bad apples spoiling the whole bunch, and that getting rid of them would fix the problems.

Which is why, I guess, that all but one of us are looking for new jobs. And that one person is reconsidering.

Because when you have a wife who's on palliative chemotherapy, even a potential gap in insurance coverage beats working here.

The training and education we were promised hasn't materialized.

We're used as a dumping ground for VIPs, when actual sick patients are pushed to other, even more crowded units.

We've won awards and have certifications out the wazoo, but the things that made those certifications and awards are gone now.
Yet we're still expected to make do, somehow.

And if we stand firm on staffing grids and patient safety, we're written up and our patients are moved elsewhere, to make room for the aforementioned VIPs.

I dread coming to work every day. The only thing that makes it possible for me to sleep the night before a shift is Benadryl. And bourbon.

I'm terrified that something horrible will happen, that a patient will die or be injured, because we don't have enough staff.

That almost happened last week. A patient with a sudden neurological decline had to be transported to the operating theater by two doctors, because we were short nurses to monitor him.

I miss the days when I could leave work and not ruminate on possible mistakes or oversights I might've made.

I miss being a nurse rather than a combination unit secretary, patient care aide, phlebotomist, janitor, social worker, and engineer.

Broken equipment stays broken for months.

Our infection rates are up and our patient satisfaction scores are down. We've been told we can be disciplined for both.

I loved this job for years, and fought really hard to keep just this thing from happening. I'm incredibly proud of the work that we do and the outcomes we've had in the past. We've done it all together, as a group of very stubborn nurses, in spite of--not because of--our managers and administrators. I'm tired now, and I want to back off and not fight every single day for basic safety and resources.

"Well, I've been doing the same thing for more than a decade, and I felt like it was time to branch out and broaden my skill base."