I need a clone of myself

Not because the world needs another me, but because I need another me. I'm a critical care nurse and I absolutely love nursing. I find a happiness and contentment when I'm taking care of patients that nothing else in my life has ever given me.

We are in a nursing shortage that appears to get worse every day. I see nurses leaving their profession all the time. Why? They are burnt out. Not because of the patients or because they don't like nursing. It's because of the demands of management to do more every day. Every couple of days we are given more documentation to do. I've been to three mandatory in-service classes in the past two weeks. They were great, I enjoyed them. I learned new things. Important things that will help me in my job. But along with every one of these in-services comes more documentation, more red tape, more time consuming tasks that take away from patient care. Administration is constantly harping on customer service. I'm a huge cheerleader for customer service. I feel like I go above and beyond when it comes to customer service. But there are times when because of the acuity of our census that the documentation  gets in the way of patient care. We have to be vigilent of CYA (cover your ass). Everyday they ask more and more of us and expect us to take care of more patients with less help from those angels called nurses aides. And all the while management is wringing their hands wondering why they can't keep good nurses. Many nights I leave work feeling defeated. I can't stand it when the clerical aspect of my job takes away from the clinical part of my job. When I know a patient needs someone to hold their hand for a few minutes and listen to their fears and concerns and I can't do that because they've just told me that I have a patient coming up from the ER with  active chest pain and  new onset atrial fib on a heparin drip. The other night I had just this situation happen: I had a patient going for a pacemaker the next morning. He was an elderly man and was very scared and needed a little tlc and reassurance. I had the ER patient coming up any minute, and the nurses' station had just called me to tell me that another of my patients was having chest pain. So I go to the patient having chest pain, get vitals, start the O2, call for a 12 lead EKG, and give the SL nitroglycerin. When you're treating chest pain you can't leave that patient. They get Nitro,you take vitals in five minutes. If they are still having the chest pain you give another Nitro (provided the Nitro hasn't knocked their pressure too low), you do this times 3, praying that their chest pain is gone by the time you get the third Nitro in them. If it isn't you go to IV Morphine. All the while I'm doing this, I'm thinking about the man in 327 that needs someone to listen to him, the ER patient coming up that will require a full admisssion that will take a good 45 minutes, and before I can get out of the room with my chest pain patient (the third Nitro relieved his pain), the nurses station has called me again to tell me that my patient in 330 (a confused, combative little lady on a dopamine drip) has pulled her IV out for the second time this shift. As if it isn't enough to be spread so thin (I also have 2 other patients that I'm silently praying won't need me any time soon), I'm already way behind in my charting, not to mention that it's 9:30 and I haven't had a thing to eat since lunch and my bladder feels like it's going to explode. The daughter that is staying with her mother in 330 is pitching a fit because I'm not in there pronto restarting the IV her mother has pulled out and I'm now dealing with the new admission from ER whose wife is frantic and upset thinking her husband is going to die right here, right now. I want to scream "I'm only human here people!!!!" But I don't. I smile and get them settled into room 326 and start asking the three pages of history question that are required for an admission, after I start the chest pain treatment protocol of Nitro x 3 which, for him also required 4mg of IV morphine. In the middle of all of this Lab is calling me (we carry hospital cell phones) to give me critical lab results on my patient in 328 that requires a call to his doctor (a doctor who, by the way, hates to be called and is beyond rude when we call him). Somehow I managed to make it through the rest of my sift. My chest pain patients are pain free for the moment, the doctor was called, orders were taken regarding the labs, my new admit is fully admitted, his wife has been calmed down and given coffee and a cookie, the scared little man is sleeping after his Ambien kicked in, the IV has been restarted and finally I get to give report to the night shift nurse coming on. It's now 11:45 and I have at least an hour of charting and paper work to do.

I really do love my job. I love nursing. I hate the hoops we have to jump through and I hate not being able to spend the time with each patient that they need and deserve. I don't wonder why nurses leave the profession. I do wonder why administration can't see what's going on and give us enough help that we need to do the job that we love .

Gotta go, it's time  to get ready for work! ;)