I've been a Public Health Nurse for 7 years. Time has flown by and with it things have changed to make me disillusioned with this nursing role.
In the time that I've been a PHN I've become a Public Health Expanded Role Nurse. I now work alone and see all patients in the clinic including Family Planning, STD, Immunizations, Child Health, Tuberculosis, Breast and Cervical Cancer and now Covid-19. I have my own office and exam room and during a short stint I was nurse manager over my clinic.
The nurse manager who hired me retired a year after I began. We got a replacement who was a real nut job. She was fired. Our billing manager died during the work day the same year before that NM was fired. I took the NM job and then stepped down because of staff drama and lack of direction and support from the district office. I wanted to keep that job badly, but I was set up to fail. I was told that I would have support, but that didn't happen. When I stepped down they didn't really seem to care all that much.
We got another NM and she stepped down and went part time. She stuck around for a while but eventually left PH.
Our temp NM after her stuck around for a few months and then SHE left too. Apparently the travel was an issue for her and I could tell she just didn't like working in our clinic.
And then when we got another NM she stayed 18 months and left too.
This clinic is a freaking mess. There is no direction. No accountability for anything. I've been the primary nurse since 2017 and it's been chaos the entire time. Our district off is constantly telling us that we need to see more patients, that they can't justify hiring anyone else to help in the clinic so all the patients are being seen by me. Don't get me wrong, the patients aren't the problem. I love the people I see. I've made long lasting relationships with a large majority of my patients over the last 7 years. I've seen many come and go and I've seen children in middle school graduate from high school during my time in this clinic.
The patient population isn't the issue. The management, or lack there of, is the issue. My bosses are all over the place. People have quit left and right in all departments. Or they have switched positions because of stress in their own areas of practice.
Money is mishandled. State funds are allotted to decorate rather than hire staff to increase patient loads in the clinic and then they complain that we aren't seeing enough people. Well, that's backward as crap because how is one nurse supposed to see more than one patient at a time? There is no doctor in the clinic. There is no one to fall back on. If I want a day off the patients are rescheduled for when I return. There is no REAL break in this clinic. None of the nursing work gets done until I return and then it's chaos as I try to play catch up and follow up with calls, paperwork and patients on the current schedule.
This is the most disorganized place I've ever worked. I didn't enjoy working in the hospital, but at least in the hospital when I left work continued to happen until I returned the next night. I didn't walk back into a 12 hour shift with the stuff I left undone STILL undone. People worked. Stuff got done and it felt like I was contributing to a fully functioning work space rather than a clinic where time stops when I take a vacation and is a hot fucking mess when I return because nothing got done while I was away.
There is no room for advancement in this clinic. I've been a PHN 2 for ages and that isn't going to change. If it does they'll have to pay me more and apparently we don't have the funds. Yet they had the funds to buys desks, chairs, paint, roofing, furniture, etc for the clinic. And when I complain about not being able to do everything that is required I am told that the same amount of patients that were seen last year were seen this year too.
Well, the patients last year were also seen by ME too. I've been the only nurse seeing every patient that walks into the building and when I ask for another nurse who WILL ACTUALLY SEE A PATIENT every once in a while I get looked at like I've lost my damn mind.
If you're hiring a nurse manager please hire someone who actually wants to do the nursing side too. They can't expect to double book patients and have only one nurse do all the patient care and follow ups while the NM sits in their office and does a days worth of monthly reports all month, who takes off every day for adjusted work time because she came in early to post shit on facebook about the clinic or sit in her office and decorate her walls and then gets to take off work an hour early to sit at home and continue to 'work' to get more AWT off. They want us to see more patients then why were they allowing the nurse manager to take vacations every other month and leave the clinic early nearly every day?
It's not fair.
And now the first person who has applied for this management position will probably get the job. THE FIRST person. They don't even care if they are qualified. If they applied apparently that means they get the job. WTF. What the actual fuck?
And I swear if they hire another associate degree nurse who can't do shit because she's not a BSN (and you need a BSN to do public health and be NM) I will pull my fucking hair out and scream. And then that nurse ended up leaving anyway so I trained her for no reason at all. WHAT is the fucking point of any of this?
It's never going to get better. I loved this job when I started it, but that's when there were people in the clinic who actually worked. Yes, eventually the nurse I was complaining about did start seeing patients but she left in 2017 so I was by myself. Now they are hiring to fill positions and to say that they have someone in the position. Who cares if they are qualified. Our district doesn't or they wouldn't hire someone without management experience nor nursing experience. The last NM had ONE year of nursing experience. The woman couldn't even drawn blood. I watched her stick someone with a needle, take the needle out and then stick them with the same needle. She didn't know that was wrong and when I told her that was wrong she ignored me...
Fuck this job. I'm considering going back to the hospital. I read through my posts from my job at the hospital and in comparison to this, that job was fucking stressful, this shit show is just as bad. Yes, it's M-F 8-5 and that was 3 12 hour shifts, but at least I was doing nursing work and not management too.
I didn't go to school to attend fucking meetings and present shit to clinic officials. I didn't go to school to read billing reports and complete inventory reports. I went to school to be a nurse.
Bitchy patients follow you everywhere. They are here too, they just aren't sick. They just keep making the same mistake over and over (STD related) and expect different results. Or they just don't care about getting and STD or getting pregnant. I'm tired of doing this. This population is dull now. I'm not making a difference in public health. I'm just being shit on by management and told to do more with less.
At least in the hospital I only had to see patients 3 days a week rather than every freaking day. And this two days off on the weekend shit isn't long enough. Especially when you request time off and come back from a vacation only to be more stressed because no work has been done in your absence.
FUCK THIS. 7 years is enough. I'm ready for a change.
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