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Nursing seems like one where a feedback loop could happen. As others quit, your patient burden increases. The higher your patient burden, the more likely you ar

Nursing seems like one where a feedback loop could happen. As others quit, your patient burden increases. The higher your patient burden, the more likely you are to make a mistake. Mistakes are often, as far as I understand, held against the nurse, so you could lose your license. At a certain point, the risk becomes too great and you're better off quitting.

sofixa 2y ago
> Nursing seems like one where a feedback loop could happen. As others quit, your patient burden increases. The higher your patient burden, the more likely you are to make a mistake Or your burden becomes insufferable and you burn out and quit.
devilbunny 2y ago
Nursing boards are extremely capricious. I'm a doctor, I've heard it too often. Shitty nurses who shirk doing work but do everything required according to protocol are fine. Great nurses who make one tragic and understandable mistake to try to help a patient get their license pulled. The US needs to adopt one particular British slang that hasn't made it across the pond: jobsworth. As in, that's more that my job's worth. Sitting there and doing nothing gets them left alone; trying to intervene without following a long and detailed protocol gets them screwed. I protect the nurses that I work with (and they don't work for me, they work for the hospital, and I don't) as best I can if they are doing the right thing. I can't be there all the time. I need to be able to trust them, and they need to be able to trust me. I was part of a bad patient interaction in the hospital a long, long time ago, when I was a resident. Nothing bad happened, ultimately. But I was harsh to a patient who was being verbally and physically abusive to the nurses. The patient complained a few days later. It was an emergency situation, and we will leave it at that (it didn't happen in the ER). And I was summoned to explain myself some days later. I said that I would not let that patient behave that way toward "my" nurses. And that was the end of it. I don't think all of them liked me before or even after, but after that, they never bothered me about trivial things because they knew I would defend them and their actions done in good faith and without idiocy. Medicine and the military are very similar in terms of command structure: doctors and officers issue orders, nurses and NCO's make them happen, and a doctor or officer who defends their nurses or NCO's for doing the right thing in the moment regardless of the rules will find their path much easier.

sofixa 2y ago

> Nursing seems like one where a feedback loop could happen. As others quit, your patient burden increases. The higher your patient burden, the more likely you are to make a mistake Or your burden becomes insufferable and you burn out and quit.

devilbunny 2y ago

Nursing boards are extremely capricious. I'm a doctor, I've heard it too often. Shitty nurses who shirk doing work but do everything required according to protocol are fine. Great nurses who make one tragic and understandable mistake to try to help a patient get their license pulled. The US needs to adopt one particular British slang that hasn't made it across the pond: jobsworth. As in, that's more that my job's worth. Sitting there and doing nothing gets them left alone; trying to intervene without following a long and detailed protocol gets them screwed. I protect the nurses that I work with (and they don't work for me, they work for the hospital, and I don't) as best I can if they are doing the right thing. I can't be there all the time. I need to be able to trust them, and they need to be able to trust me. I was part of a bad patient interaction in the hospital a long, long time ago, when I was a resident. Nothing bad happened, ultimately. But I was harsh to a patient who was being verbally and physically abusive to the nurses. The patient complained a few days later. It was an emergency situation, and we will leave it at that (it didn't happen in the ER). And I was summoned to explain myself some days later. I said that I would not let that patient behave that way toward "my" nurses. And that was the end of it. I don't think all of them liked me before or even after, but after that, they never bothered me about trivial things because they knew I would defend them and their actions done in good faith and without idiocy. Medicine and the military are very similar in terms of command structure: doctors and officers issue orders, nurses and NCO's make them happen, and a doctor or officer who defends their nurses or NCO's for doing the right thing in the moment regardless of the rules will find their path much easier.