I used to work three 12 hour shifts a week on night shift (I’m a nurse). It was tough being night shift but the pay was good and I didn’t need to be day shift for any big reason so I figured why not. Then I had my daughter and we decided that it would be in her best interest to move back and raise her around family for the first few years at least. (We had moved away for work with no intention of ever coming back)

So flash forward to now. I’m in a new area at work that I’ve never done before that is objectively easy compared to most other areas of nursing, specifically a ton easier compared to my old job. It is four 10 hour shifts per week instead of three 12s. But the work environment has incredibly low morale and honestly low standards of care for their patients. Everyone constantly talks about how much they hate their jobs and how there is mandatory overtime and being on call really often. Half of the staff here do the bare minimum to complete their tasks and it disgusts me that they cut corners and do things I was always taught is not good for the patients. The pay is a lot lower than my last job but the hours are amazing (for now, I’m too new to qualify for overtime or on call). I get a lot of extra time to see my daughter at the end of the day which is a really nice perk and one of the main reasons I took the job, but the reality of working here is not at all what I expected.

I was told there was a staff educator that would be really involved in my orientation that would help teach me the stuff unique to this area of nursing but the reality has been that the educator was woefully unprepared for me when I started and when she finally did give me some information (three weeks into working here) it is all garbage corporate policy nonsense and nothing actually pertinent to the job. There are all kinds of unique tools and items I need to learn to work in this field of nursing but they offered me no resources to study or even documents with pictures to show me what they are talking about when someone says go grab this or that.

It is a complete mess in my eyes and a very poor environment for learning and discouraged me a lot from the get go but then I learned I am just supposed to jump from nurse to nurse randomly without any real structure and it turns out that about half of the nurses I’ve been told to go work with so not want to have any part in training a new person so they barely put any effort in. And some do not adhere to the rules I was told we are all supposed to adhere to. It upsets me to no end when I am told “this is the way we are supposed to do things, but I do it like this because it’s easier” or because “I’ve always done it like this”

Hating my time spent at work due to the poor standards of care and the low morale is seriously draining. I still, of course, enjoy the schedule but money is tighter than it has ever been in my life and I am starting to feel like it just isn’t worth it. I could potentially take a different night shift job that is more similar to my old job that would pay more and I’m sure I would be happier with work, but that will mean I will see my daughter less.

It just sucks. I wish the staff here were better. I wish the pay was better so the morale was better. I wish there wasn’t any forced overtime or call. I honestly wish I had never moved back here. This whole region sucks for nursing work. But I need to put my daughter first and just stick it out for a few years so she can get the important socialization and family bonding that she can only get through us living here.