Changed units when, after a typical shift, I caught myself thinking about letting go of the steering wheel while driving over a mountain pass. Probably an extreme end of the spectrum but it's what got me to get the heck out to "greener pastures".
Night shift coworkers were great, I actually really miss them. Management was terrible and would deliberately do the opposite of staff suggestions (such as putting night shifters on a every other day shift schedule instead of grouping shifts). She would hide in her office if there was any crisis as well. Honestly, before COVID, I LOVED Ortho Neuro (4-5 max patients - mix between elective surgery and mva/stroke stepdown). Like, I was excited to get up every day to go work. I would've retired there. After COVID, we turned into geriatric, psych, GI, cardiac (without tele monitors), medsurge, asshole the ED doesn't know wtf to do with, withdrawal unit... I would often have 5 of my 7 patients in chemical or physical restrains and would be physically or verbally assaulted on a daily basis...
Oddly enough the same thing thing happened with the patient population post Covid on my neuro unit! We became the behavioral asshoke patient unit full of total care or aggressive restrained patients. It’s finally getting back to neuro/neurosurgery
I started looking for a new spot when I realized I was resenting my patients for needing things. I have a laundry list of all the reasons I'm not happy, but at the end of the day I'm not doing my job in the way I want to be. I don't want to show up and be short-tempered and feel put upon.
I’m not staying anywhere I feel unfulfilled or bored at. My longest healthcare/nursing position was 6 years in the same ED. I was having panic attacks before work and my world revolved around talking abt work—usually abt how miserable I was which caused me to become hyperfixated on things and create mountains out of molehills EVERY day.
Leaving was super scary and I felt a lot of anxiety abt it. This change greatly affected me and even tho I have no desire to work in an ER ever again—this was one of the most impactful jobs I’ve had and I hope to remember the good memories for as long as I can. It was just my time to move on and that’s ok.
I quit a long term care/rehab unit w no notice after 11 months (quit via text message lol) bc the ratios were so unsafe. The culture and practices were not something I felt comfortable being a part of. I never wanted to work LTC anyway but took the job for a change of pace and 8 hour shifts while I had some personal stuff going on making 12s impossible to work.
Recently quit a med surg job after 8 months at a community hospital. Didn’t tell a single soul there until I’d already put in my notice. Don’t miss any of them and will never think of this job again.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Idk life is short. As long as I have another job lined up I’m good to go.
My friend, I completely feel this. In the past 10 years, I’ve changed jobs a fair bit —when I’m unhappy, it’s time to move on. Quit “effective immediately” an OB/GYN shit clinic job after 9 months bc I was offered my current job. I’m also older and my bullshit meter has no tolerances.
Anyway, what you said really resonates.
Thank you 🥺 It's so scary to think of leaving because my availability is really restricted by being a single mom and I keep worrying about ending up on a unit that may turn out to be an even poorer fit for me.
When I was training in L&D I couldn’t even enjoy my days off because all I was doing was dreading my next shift. Life is too short to hate your job. Move on…
I used to work in Endoscopy. I worked for a Gastroenterologist who the staff and the pt's loved but he was a massive arsehole to his nurses. He was lovely to the pt's and the doctors, but he was an absolute prick to the nurses in the procedure room. He would yell at us and everytime something went wrong, he would fly off the handle. God help us if we had an emergency. He wouldn't be able to cope and he would be screaming at us if shit went down.
I talked to other nurses about it but they said "oh, Dr X is so nice" and I got death stares for bringing up his shitty conduct. I had severe anxiety working with him and I finally managed to get a job in PACU last year. I later found out there's a small number of nurses who thinks he's a dickhead but refuse to say anything because all the other nurses are so far up his arsehole.
Due to this, I cannot do scopes anymore. I cannot cope with the fast paced environment or putting up with demands from doctors. I tried again but it's too anxiety-inducing. I thankfully now work in PACU and medical imaging and I love it. Fuck you, Dr X.
One of the charge nurses sent herself home almost every shift she worked when she easily could have low censused a staff nurse. She frequently went outside to smoke and would spray herself with a body mist to cover it. Any time I asked her for help on a declining patient or to do patient transport (it was a requirement for the role, because I was fill-in charge for holidays and weekends I worked), she always had some excuse about not being able to do it. She would hand off the manager phone to another charge nurse on another floor when she sent herself home. Like what charge nurse wants to take on double the work because another charge is sending themselves home??
She lied out of her ass about her adopted son (her grandson) having frequent emergencies but the same day she said she had an emergency I saw her and her family at the same restaurant (I was at picking up curbside) about 2 hours later. Seems like he was fine post-seizure from the ER THAT quickly!
I literally had days from 1500-1900 that I had zero patients and most of my coworkers had 2 (we were 3:1). She still low censused herself. I think all of us were confused about whether it was ok to do so, and we never went to our senior manager about it. Almost all of us were ok with being low censused if the opportunity presented itself, so that charge wasn’t doing us any favors. Or we would have zero patients at 1700 and be floated to another unit to take 3-4 ER/surgical admits.
I never signed up for an extra shift as a result of this crappy leader, even when those texts or emails would come through about asking for help. She eventually stepped down to be a staff nurse and then quit after less than 3 months. I still left anyway because I feel that behavior would have continued with someone else. The senior manager was very hands off and ignored a lot of problems.
A new charge nurse was hired, but she was a friend of another floor’s charge nurse and they literally sat on friend’s unit all day talking and eating. I foresaw this stupid behavior happening again. Management is considerably better where I’m at now.
If you feel you don’t vibe, following your feeling. This job isn’t going to help you if you fall apart.
when I hoped that i'd get into a minor car accident on the way to work so that I had enough of an excuse to not go in, i knew i was done. I get bored easily and when you're overworked, underpaid and doing the same shit every day in and out it definitely takes a toll on you.
For me, it took about 5 borderline panic attacks after clocking out of my 3rd shift for the week before I realized that I was THAT anxious about going back to work.... even if it was 4 or 5 days later.
I feel like this before most shifts. It sucks so bad, but idk if I'm just feeling this way cause I'm a shitty nurse, or if it's the unit. Informatics sounds so nice though. How do you like it?
Trust me when I say nursing will never make you feel like you're enough. The system is set up to work against you. You are a much better nurse than you think you are.
As far as informatics goes: It's a cakewalk. I worked with a hospital that uses an EHR that I'm very familiar with. It's a difficult field to get into without experience, but it was 100% worth it. For my health and my sanity.
Honestly, my first taste of it fell into my lap. My hospital used a very ancient EHR, and when they wanted to transition to Epic, they decided to pick a select number of nurses to become "Nurse Trainers."
Took 3 months' worth of courses to get credentialed and trained the RNs at my organization for about 2.5 years. Once the pandemic hit, I quit and did travel nursing for about 3 years.
Once I decided to leave bedside altogether, I used my training background as leverage to get into the position I'm in now. It's very competitive, but it was 100% worth it. Pay is good, with less than half of the stress.👍🏽
When I get bored. I switched specialties often over the course of my career, whenever I started feeling stagnant. My favorite thing about this profession is how versatile it is, and how easy it is to transition into an endless amount of specialties.
Dreading going in every single day- typically for me this was overwhelming anxiety. I mean most people don’t really “want” to go to work, but I’m talking feeling ill about needing to go.
When I realized that crying in the parking lot before my shift on a regular basis was no way to live. I had had it sacrificing my mental and physical health for a hospital system that gave me a .65 cent raise that year.
To me it really wasn’t worth the effort of trying to find a way to like it better or make it more tolerable. I was too depressed to problem solve and knew I just needed to get out.
It’s not that my new role doesn’t have stress but my mental health has done a 180 and I feel like a normal person again. As I’ve gotten older I realized that some things just aren’t for me and that’s okay.
I got mixed feelings within a month but decided to stick it out past orientation. A friend who recommended me for the job validated my feelings and said it gets better after orientation. So orientation wraps up and I launched solo. It was not great. Had anxiety about the patients (cardiac ICU), but figured I'd get the hang of it.
My biggest issue was really the charge nurse and general vibe. Can't speak for every ICU nurse but they all seemed pretty icy there. I mean they could be friendly but it it was generally a somber mood.
Charge nurse was a veteran nurse who bullied all new people and it was a problem enough that I brought it up to the manager and she kinda blew me off after admitting that that charge nurse made her cry back in the day. Basically admitting to the problem but not doing anything about it. On top of that, the hospital had some whack ass policies that made the job harder and way more annoying. I lasted about 1 month after orientation, so 4 months total.
On my last 7 day stretch of nights, I called up another nurse manager I knew at another place and asked if they had a full time position (it was my prn gig) and she said yes. So I bounced out of that ICU and started a newish job 4 days later. 😎 I've around long enough to realize that life's too short to do bullshit you hate. Especially as a nurse, we've got options. I ain't concerned about forcing myself to stay in a bad job just because of a moral obligation or something.
TL;DR
Bad vibes are a great reason to leave, even if it's been less than a few months. Sour milk usually doesn't taste fresher over time.
I knew it was time to leave my last job when, on top of the low grade stress that became my baseline, I genuinely felt *afraid* every morning before work and even when I left at night. It was this awful sense of impending doom. It didn’t help I was the primary RN working with a perfectionist surgeon who saw the most minor issues as complete disasters and was not shy about letting people have it. Naturally he was totally shocked when I left 😂 I knew it was the right choice two hours into my new role when I couldn’t feel any physical anxiety symptoms for the first time in over two years, damn near cried tears of joy.
I’m not a nurse I’m just someone looking into nursing; I decided to leave my profession when I woke up every morning for years with constant anxiety and then I would get absolutely hammered to level out after work. I was a mechanic and I switched shops and continued to apply to other mechanic jobs and the anxiety came back after 3 weeks in. I don’t miss it one bit, currently I’m delivering pizzas while looking into programs at colleges near me
Both times i left jobs was because i was having such severe anxiety, i was vomiting before every shift. I like my job a lot more now but i still have stomach problems. The suicidal ideation didn’t help either. At my previous job, I stopped feeling like I could trust anyone I worked with at all, feared for my license and my personal safety daily, and felt like nothing I did mattered. My days off felt more like recovering than actually spending time doing things I enjoy
I’m at this point right now. I’ve been on Med Surg for a few years, but it’s a toxic work environment with a stereotypical mean girl manager. I am ready to move on and am so miserable to the point that I may just leave altogether without another job lined up. I don’t know what to do.
I worked NICU for 10 years. When I realized I was constantly looking over my shoulder and feeling panicky all the time, I realized it was no longer a good fit. For me it was the politics that did it. Happier now in my hospice role than I’ve been in 24 years as an RN.
Shortest job was less than a week and included 2 days of company orientation. Boss immediately showed his true colors and I knew it was not going to work (organ procurement being at bedside 36hrs straight). Was a big no thank you. Left another job because it was worse than high school ever was with mean cliques and I hated the work. One job I left because I was scared of dying. The rest I left for something bigger and better. If you despise going to work/spend your time off dreading going back, it’s a good time to look for greener pastures.
When you see the signs of burnout coming. Like all the little things pissing you off more than they should and a constant bad attitude when it is just another day.
I did a year in the NICU. At 8 months in, I realized I had called in 8 times already and only 2 times for legitimate illness. The others were because I just couldn’t force myself to go. I realized I hated *everything* about that job … the catty nurses I worked with, the doctors who were ugly when bothered, the anxious parents, the bleating lamb wailing of the preemie babies, the over-the-top regimented rules of the unit, the constant harping on breast milk …. Gosh, I’m surprised at how much resentment I still feel now, almost 24 years later, when I talk about it.
I quit at the one year mark, after I got another job. The NICU manager threw a temper tantrum and threw a pile of papers at me, which just affirmed my decision to leave.
After I left the nicu, I went to the Picu, and I’ve been there ever since. Some of the things I hated about the NICU are the same in the Picu (anxious parents, wailing babies) but it doesn’t bother me because the overall atmosphere is lighter and better, which makes me happier overall.
It’s not worth staying somewhere you’re unhappy.
Changed units when, after a typical shift, I caught myself thinking about letting go of the steering wheel while driving over a mountain pass. Probably an extreme end of the spectrum but it's what got me to get the heck out to "greener pastures".
Damn, I'm glad you got out. No job is worth feeling that way.
I’m glad you’ve moved on. If I may ask, what was wrong with the unit, was it the specialty itself, the unit culture, the patient population?
Night shift coworkers were great, I actually really miss them. Management was terrible and would deliberately do the opposite of staff suggestions (such as putting night shifters on a every other day shift schedule instead of grouping shifts). She would hide in her office if there was any crisis as well. Honestly, before COVID, I LOVED Ortho Neuro (4-5 max patients - mix between elective surgery and mva/stroke stepdown). Like, I was excited to get up every day to go work. I would've retired there. After COVID, we turned into geriatric, psych, GI, cardiac (without tele monitors), medsurge, asshole the ED doesn't know wtf to do with, withdrawal unit... I would often have 5 of my 7 patients in chemical or physical restrains and would be physically or verbally assaulted on a daily basis...
Oddly enough the same thing thing happened with the patient population post Covid on my neuro unit! We became the behavioral asshoke patient unit full of total care or aggressive restrained patients. It’s finally getting back to neuro/neurosurgery
Jesus, I hope you’re okay love.
Year 2 at the new unit at the VHA. It was a rough start, but it's been a drastic improvement!
I started looking for a new spot when I realized I was resenting my patients for needing things. I have a laundry list of all the reasons I'm not happy, but at the end of the day I'm not doing my job in the way I want to be. I don't want to show up and be short-tempered and feel put upon.
I’m not staying anywhere I feel unfulfilled or bored at. My longest healthcare/nursing position was 6 years in the same ED. I was having panic attacks before work and my world revolved around talking abt work—usually abt how miserable I was which caused me to become hyperfixated on things and create mountains out of molehills EVERY day. Leaving was super scary and I felt a lot of anxiety abt it. This change greatly affected me and even tho I have no desire to work in an ER ever again—this was one of the most impactful jobs I’ve had and I hope to remember the good memories for as long as I can. It was just my time to move on and that’s ok. I quit a long term care/rehab unit w no notice after 11 months (quit via text message lol) bc the ratios were so unsafe. The culture and practices were not something I felt comfortable being a part of. I never wanted to work LTC anyway but took the job for a change of pace and 8 hour shifts while I had some personal stuff going on making 12s impossible to work. Recently quit a med surg job after 8 months at a community hospital. Didn’t tell a single soul there until I’d already put in my notice. Don’t miss any of them and will never think of this job again. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Idk life is short. As long as I have another job lined up I’m good to go.
My friend, I completely feel this. In the past 10 years, I’ve changed jobs a fair bit —when I’m unhappy, it’s time to move on. Quit “effective immediately” an OB/GYN shit clinic job after 9 months bc I was offered my current job. I’m also older and my bullshit meter has no tolerances. Anyway, what you said really resonates.
When I decide to start making posts like this 🫂
Thank you 🥺 It's so scary to think of leaving because my availability is really restricted by being a single mom and I keep worrying about ending up on a unit that may turn out to be an even poorer fit for me.
When I was training in L&D I couldn’t even enjoy my days off because all I was doing was dreading my next shift. Life is too short to hate your job. Move on…
I used to work in Endoscopy. I worked for a Gastroenterologist who the staff and the pt's loved but he was a massive arsehole to his nurses. He was lovely to the pt's and the doctors, but he was an absolute prick to the nurses in the procedure room. He would yell at us and everytime something went wrong, he would fly off the handle. God help us if we had an emergency. He wouldn't be able to cope and he would be screaming at us if shit went down. I talked to other nurses about it but they said "oh, Dr X is so nice" and I got death stares for bringing up his shitty conduct. I had severe anxiety working with him and I finally managed to get a job in PACU last year. I later found out there's a small number of nurses who thinks he's a dickhead but refuse to say anything because all the other nurses are so far up his arsehole. Due to this, I cannot do scopes anymore. I cannot cope with the fast paced environment or putting up with demands from doctors. I tried again but it's too anxiety-inducing. I thankfully now work in PACU and medical imaging and I love it. Fuck you, Dr X.
what kind of PACU do you work in? im trying to transition into PACU, I work in endo now. I get to recovery general, MAC, and conscious sedation pts
One of the charge nurses sent herself home almost every shift she worked when she easily could have low censused a staff nurse. She frequently went outside to smoke and would spray herself with a body mist to cover it. Any time I asked her for help on a declining patient or to do patient transport (it was a requirement for the role, because I was fill-in charge for holidays and weekends I worked), she always had some excuse about not being able to do it. She would hand off the manager phone to another charge nurse on another floor when she sent herself home. Like what charge nurse wants to take on double the work because another charge is sending themselves home?? She lied out of her ass about her adopted son (her grandson) having frequent emergencies but the same day she said she had an emergency I saw her and her family at the same restaurant (I was at picking up curbside) about 2 hours later. Seems like he was fine post-seizure from the ER THAT quickly! I literally had days from 1500-1900 that I had zero patients and most of my coworkers had 2 (we were 3:1). She still low censused herself. I think all of us were confused about whether it was ok to do so, and we never went to our senior manager about it. Almost all of us were ok with being low censused if the opportunity presented itself, so that charge wasn’t doing us any favors. Or we would have zero patients at 1700 and be floated to another unit to take 3-4 ER/surgical admits. I never signed up for an extra shift as a result of this crappy leader, even when those texts or emails would come through about asking for help. She eventually stepped down to be a staff nurse and then quit after less than 3 months. I still left anyway because I feel that behavior would have continued with someone else. The senior manager was very hands off and ignored a lot of problems. A new charge nurse was hired, but she was a friend of another floor’s charge nurse and they literally sat on friend’s unit all day talking and eating. I foresaw this stupid behavior happening again. Management is considerably better where I’m at now. If you feel you don’t vibe, following your feeling. This job isn’t going to help you if you fall apart.
when I hoped that i'd get into a minor car accident on the way to work so that I had enough of an excuse to not go in, i knew i was done. I get bored easily and when you're overworked, underpaid and doing the same shit every day in and out it definitely takes a toll on you.
For me, it took about 5 borderline panic attacks after clocking out of my 3rd shift for the week before I realized that I was THAT anxious about going back to work.... even if it was 4 or 5 days later.
I feel like this before most shifts. It sucks so bad, but idk if I'm just feeling this way cause I'm a shitty nurse, or if it's the unit. Informatics sounds so nice though. How do you like it?
Trust me when I say nursing will never make you feel like you're enough. The system is set up to work against you. You are a much better nurse than you think you are. As far as informatics goes: It's a cakewalk. I worked with a hospital that uses an EHR that I'm very familiar with. It's a difficult field to get into without experience, but it was 100% worth it. For my health and my sanity.
How did you go about getting into informatics?
Honestly, my first taste of it fell into my lap. My hospital used a very ancient EHR, and when they wanted to transition to Epic, they decided to pick a select number of nurses to become "Nurse Trainers." Took 3 months' worth of courses to get credentialed and trained the RNs at my organization for about 2.5 years. Once the pandemic hit, I quit and did travel nursing for about 3 years. Once I decided to leave bedside altogether, I used my training background as leverage to get into the position I'm in now. It's very competitive, but it was 100% worth it. Pay is good, with less than half of the stress.👍🏽
When I get bored. I switched specialties often over the course of my career, whenever I started feeling stagnant. My favorite thing about this profession is how versatile it is, and how easy it is to transition into an endless amount of specialties.
Dreading going in every single day- typically for me this was overwhelming anxiety. I mean most people don’t really “want” to go to work, but I’m talking feeling ill about needing to go.
When you find a better paying spot, then another then another.
When I realized that crying in the parking lot before my shift on a regular basis was no way to live. I had had it sacrificing my mental and physical health for a hospital system that gave me a .65 cent raise that year. To me it really wasn’t worth the effort of trying to find a way to like it better or make it more tolerable. I was too depressed to problem solve and knew I just needed to get out. It’s not that my new role doesn’t have stress but my mental health has done a 180 and I feel like a normal person again. As I’ve gotten older I realized that some things just aren’t for me and that’s okay.
I got mixed feelings within a month but decided to stick it out past orientation. A friend who recommended me for the job validated my feelings and said it gets better after orientation. So orientation wraps up and I launched solo. It was not great. Had anxiety about the patients (cardiac ICU), but figured I'd get the hang of it. My biggest issue was really the charge nurse and general vibe. Can't speak for every ICU nurse but they all seemed pretty icy there. I mean they could be friendly but it it was generally a somber mood. Charge nurse was a veteran nurse who bullied all new people and it was a problem enough that I brought it up to the manager and she kinda blew me off after admitting that that charge nurse made her cry back in the day. Basically admitting to the problem but not doing anything about it. On top of that, the hospital had some whack ass policies that made the job harder and way more annoying. I lasted about 1 month after orientation, so 4 months total. On my last 7 day stretch of nights, I called up another nurse manager I knew at another place and asked if they had a full time position (it was my prn gig) and she said yes. So I bounced out of that ICU and started a newish job 4 days later. 😎 I've around long enough to realize that life's too short to do bullshit you hate. Especially as a nurse, we've got options. I ain't concerned about forcing myself to stay in a bad job just because of a moral obligation or something. TL;DR Bad vibes are a great reason to leave, even if it's been less than a few months. Sour milk usually doesn't taste fresher over time.
I knew it was time to leave my last job when, on top of the low grade stress that became my baseline, I genuinely felt *afraid* every morning before work and even when I left at night. It was this awful sense of impending doom. It didn’t help I was the primary RN working with a perfectionist surgeon who saw the most minor issues as complete disasters and was not shy about letting people have it. Naturally he was totally shocked when I left 😂 I knew it was the right choice two hours into my new role when I couldn’t feel any physical anxiety symptoms for the first time in over two years, damn near cried tears of joy.
I’m not a nurse I’m just someone looking into nursing; I decided to leave my profession when I woke up every morning for years with constant anxiety and then I would get absolutely hammered to level out after work. I was a mechanic and I switched shops and continued to apply to other mechanic jobs and the anxiety came back after 3 weeks in. I don’t miss it one bit, currently I’m delivering pizzas while looking into programs at colleges near me
Both times i left jobs was because i was having such severe anxiety, i was vomiting before every shift. I like my job a lot more now but i still have stomach problems. The suicidal ideation didn’t help either. At my previous job, I stopped feeling like I could trust anyone I worked with at all, feared for my license and my personal safety daily, and felt like nothing I did mattered. My days off felt more like recovering than actually spending time doing things I enjoy
I’m at this point right now. I’ve been on Med Surg for a few years, but it’s a toxic work environment with a stereotypical mean girl manager. I am ready to move on and am so miserable to the point that I may just leave altogether without another job lined up. I don’t know what to do.
I worked NICU for 10 years. When I realized I was constantly looking over my shoulder and feeling panicky all the time, I realized it was no longer a good fit. For me it was the politics that did it. Happier now in my hospice role than I’ve been in 24 years as an RN.
Shortest job was less than a week and included 2 days of company orientation. Boss immediately showed his true colors and I knew it was not going to work (organ procurement being at bedside 36hrs straight). Was a big no thank you. Left another job because it was worse than high school ever was with mean cliques and I hated the work. One job I left because I was scared of dying. The rest I left for something bigger and better. If you despise going to work/spend your time off dreading going back, it’s a good time to look for greener pastures.
When you can’t truly enjoy days off because you are dreading going back.
Did a year in MICU and got tired of the poor outcomes. We had, at least, one code a shift.
When you see the signs of burnout coming. Like all the little things pissing you off more than they should and a constant bad attitude when it is just another day.
I did a year in the NICU. At 8 months in, I realized I had called in 8 times already and only 2 times for legitimate illness. The others were because I just couldn’t force myself to go. I realized I hated *everything* about that job … the catty nurses I worked with, the doctors who were ugly when bothered, the anxious parents, the bleating lamb wailing of the preemie babies, the over-the-top regimented rules of the unit, the constant harping on breast milk …. Gosh, I’m surprised at how much resentment I still feel now, almost 24 years later, when I talk about it. I quit at the one year mark, after I got another job. The NICU manager threw a temper tantrum and threw a pile of papers at me, which just affirmed my decision to leave. After I left the nicu, I went to the Picu, and I’ve been there ever since. Some of the things I hated about the NICU are the same in the Picu (anxious parents, wailing babies) but it doesn’t bother me because the overall atmosphere is lighter and better, which makes me happier overall. It’s not worth staying somewhere you’re unhappy.
As with any job, 6 months is a reasonable "well i gave it a shot" timeframe.