So I started out in Cardiac Telemetry as a new grad. I knew right out of school that I wanted to have Telemetry as a foundation for my practice. If you are starting out as a new grad in the US, Tele is a great start. From Tele it is much easier to navigate into specialty areas than moving from Med-Surg. After about 18 months I was fatigued with my job. I worked on the biggest unit in the hospital which was split into regular Tele, Med-Tele, VIP unit, and observation unit; as well as being floated to MICU, CVSD, Maternity, Med-surg and the new sister hospital which had opened a good 20 min drive from the main campus. I had started working on days as a new grad as I thrive under pressure. I learned so much in the first 6 months and definitely found my groove, understanding my patients, documentation and the docs. I found that I really enjoyed working the observation unit as it was high turn over, fast paced, and a bit of a mystery of what the ER was bringing up. One time I had a pt come up dx: Chest Pain. I gave her morphine, did an EKG, put her on O2, call the doc – she was immediately sent to the cath lab. This pt should have been a cardiac alert, turned out that she had 100% occlusion in the Circumflex – she was dying. I loved that I was on the cusp of something, it was fast, it was more challenging than the other units and I liked it. After about 14 months on days, I switched to night shift. Our night shift staff was thin, a lot had left and they were struggling, and to be honest, I needed the pay increase. So I did nights for the last 5 months of my job and started looking for other opportunities.
I landed a job at another hospital, again it was a non-profit hospital, but in an affluent area. I was working in CV-Step Down, sister floor to CVICU post-CABG/TAVR pts mainly. I was thrilled that I was moving deeper into the cardiac specialty, this is what I wanted. After 3 months in my new job I wasn’t happy. I was working nights, the staff were burned out and it showed. I found that the acuity of my patients weren’t all that different from my prior job. Post-open heart really only meant, possible Afib – start Cardizem or Amiodarone drip, chest tubes – usually 2-4, Dermabond midline chest incision and leg donor site, and lastly a foley. There was nothing really interesting about it. The fun happened in the OR, ICU and then during the day when the chest tubes were pulled, I missed out on all of that and just ended up changing the chest tube dressing and drawing blood from the central line.
I started to feel depressed; I started dreading going to work. I wondered if I was looking for something better that didn’t exist. I thought nursing was this great expanse of possibilities, but here I was feeling crappy after changing jobs from a crappy position to another one. I considered if I just wasn’t made for nursing. I’ll be honest, I never planned on being a nurse, I didn’t grow up dressing up as a nurse and putting a stethoscope to my teddy bear – that wasn’t me. Life brought me to nursing, and my ability to take on a challenge, think critically, enjoy interacting with people, had made this a good choice for me, but now I was here in this place where I was unhappy and couldn’t quite figure out how to fix it. So I did what I thought I should do and start looking for another job. Now I was looking for a higher level: ER, ICU, ICU specialities.
Ironically I reapplied for some of the jobs I had applied for when leaving my first job. I really just felt like I had nothing to lose. I did get a call back for an ER job at a Level II Trauma hospital right on the highway. It is one hospital within a large hospital system, which means there are a lot of jobs available without actually quitting and having to learn a whole new system over again. So, I booked the interview and figured I’d wing it, at the end of the day, I still had a job, even if I didn’t get a new one, the bills would still get paid haha!
Stay Tuned for what happens next…!
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