"Nurse"

BY MELANIE BELL

She is a working nurse in the healthcare field and has been nursing for many years. Living with one dog and a cat, she plans to start her own business making charcuterie platters for people and anyone in her community. Through this, she plans to commit herself to doing wonderful things for a long time to come. 

I work in the healthcare system as a professional nurse who cares for the elderly and disabled. Every morning, I leave early and come back very late in the evening. The commuting that I have to do on a daily basis is extremely stressful and exhausting. It leads me to wonder if any of what goes on in this job is worth worrying about anymore.

The work environment in this job can go from one minute, everything is normal, then very overwhelming the next. What I found extremely frustrating about this kind of work is just how many people can possibly come in with the craziest requests and demands all at once. One time, a patient with a very unreasonable request said that they wanted an entire bakery of sweets because they couldn’t eat solid food for a month. And even though they still could not eat anything like sweets, they still demanded that they get what they wanted. This is one of the many problems in the healthcare system. It is a place where just about anyone can come in and cause a commotion for no reason at all. Because of this, it makes my and the staff workers’ jobs tougher than they have to be. And unfortunately, I have seen that this always leads to a burnout effect on everyone here. 

My time in this job has led me to understand just how important it is to have people who are competent and can perform without complications. What happens to people who do not listen to instructions from their supervisors is that they always get yelled at or, worse, fired immediately. This outcome is even worse for all of us workers because then we are down another staff member to care for the patients. When the hospitals are low on staff, I am always called in to work, no matter what time of day or night it is. 

I have found out that this job is not worth my time and money wasted on commuting every day just to deal with very unreasonable and demanding people. My main passion is to have my own business in making and designing charcuterie platters. This kind of work is more rewarding and relaxing than any other job I had beforehand. Because of this, I found that the hospital work was not worth my time, and doing something that can benefit my community and family was far better than any other job that I could ever have.