Over It.

This last week I had a meeting with my NICU manager. They call it a 90 day check-in... It's not meant to critique me, instead, it's a way for HR to say that they are trying to retain staff.

Boy, I am betting my manager was wishing I never came in. I let her know how unhappy I am, how difficult it is to come in to work and be given shit assignments. Every. Night. And how frustrated I am that others are being oriented to vents before me and they were hired after me. I don't know why I bother going over these things with her. I should just tell her everything's fine and I quit. But, the only thing I hold onto in my life is working on standing up for myself and documenting the troubles I encounter. It helped me through the crappy relationships, through school, through the troubles I experienced in Small Town. Documentation is all I have. So, I chose to let her have it. Tell her most of my grievances and explain why she will continue to lose mass amounts of staff over and over.



Yesterday morning I got yelled at by "Stinky-Poo Doctor". That's what I'll call him. I got the name from my counselor who has heard ALL about him. He yelled at me because I had to wait for an epidural. By the time the pt was ready for the epidural and I call anesthesia, another nurse on the floor called and asked if she could steal the anesthesiologist because her mama was an 8 (cm) while mine was 1 cm. I agreed, not knowing Stinky-Poo Doc was waiting out at the nurse's station for her. So he called from the nurse's station and yelled at me! Before letting me talk, he slammed the phone down. and immediately called back to tell me not to page him. "Okay" came out a little too happy (I'm so over his shit.) So he slammed the phone back down and I didn't see him the rest of the day.

I get that he's busy. I understand that he has meetings and stuff to do as a doctor, but he never made a plan with me to come in and check her in 30 minutes or a plan to put in an IUPC at a certain time. So why is he calling me, yelling at me for not having him come in to see her and do all these dumb things if he never told me he was going to? And he saw anesthesia come by and then go into the other room. I get that he didn't know the story, but I'm not going to try to fight with him on these things. He's going to think I'm making excuses and he wouldn't care anyway. That's just how he is.

Regardless, I am so sick of having to work with him. I would have quit right on the spot if I could. But it wouldn't do anything. He wouldn't get reprimanded. He wouldn't be chastised or change in any way. People have let him go along and bully everyone for so long that he knows he can just get away with it. I wish I could report him somehow, but there's nothing I can do. His aggression and moodiness makes work unbearable. I don't want to take his patients, I don't want to work when he is the in-house OB, I don't want to ever see him again IN MY LIFE. My fear is that other doctors will be like this if I were to move somewhere else.

I just don't understand why they are allowed to be such assholes and so persnickety and so ridiculous. We bend over backwards to make sure the doctors at this hospital have their exact gloves and choice of "checking fluid" (I hate using the word lube) and everything just right for them. I floated to our sister hospital in town and those doctors get their own gloves out of the delivery cart! They ask you when it would be a good time for them to break their waters so that it doesn't make too much work at the end of your shift. They believe us when we believe something is wrong or when we need help. They discuss things with you and don't start yelling at the nurses for stupid shit. I don't understand how our doctors have been able to get away with so much for so long that they think us nurses are their slaves. I really don't get it.

Then, a few hours after work, when I was in the middle of my ACLS course, I got a text from the day shift charge that I didn't chart on 30 minutes of fetal monitoring strip for the induction that came in 30 minutes late, while I was doing an epidural on my other lady (after the yelling). Between being overwhelmed with a 0530 induction that was late, and a pt who waited until 0530 to want her epidural, and stinking grumpy doctors, and and and. Plus I needed to get out of report and get to the other side of town for this stupid certification class. UGH!!! So, I missed a section of strip. 1 little bit of charting that I needed to do and I forgot. Of course it's on the day when the most nitpicky charge nurse is on who gets in everyone's face if you don't do things the way she does things.

So over it.



On days when I get overwhelmed, I have this scary daydream about having a central line and just letting it drain. Let it be placed, don't hook it up to any fluids or cap it off, and just let me drain slowly until I go to sleep and then eventually just go away. Part of me wants to know if the people who rag on me constantly would even care, but most of me wouldn't want to put my family through that. Honestly, I don't think the doctor would care if he knew that I quit or died because of how ridiculous he is. The charge nurse wouldn't care. But my family would be heartbroken. I'm not going to do it. I won't hurt myself. I think I just get so overwhelmed and see no way out of the stress, that it seems like it would be nice to not be here and going through it anymore.




I hope y'alls week is going much better. I'm gonna go try to sleep again.
-BA