What follows is the editorial of the American Journal of Nursing. In it, the author reflects on the results of recent research and compares his experience as a nurse just received in the seventies … What changed since?
Nursing Outlook report (2009) analyzes the experiences of nurses recently received. It gives very good news. In fact, they are pretty bad when you think that much of what nurses complain already been documented in a book published in 1974 by the nurse and researcher Marlene Kramer, called: Clash with reality: Why nurses leave nursing .
The report analyzes the responses of nurses regarding qualitative research, with open questions that was part of a wider use of newly licensed registered nurses who were employed with less than 18 months before the study. The researchers identified five themes among the 612 comments
• conflicting expectations: Nurses expected the workplace is more in line with what they were taught in the school of nursing; «The high rates of patient nurse was a particularly dominant source of stress.»
• The need for speed: The nurses considered that there should have been more time for the transition to take over full responsibility for the care of the patient.
• Too much demand, «You ask too much» – There were many complaints about the workload, with little time to do and little time to spend with patients.
• «How dare you?»: The nurses felt that they were abused by their colleagues and by doctors and administration.
• There is a possibility of change: Change is on the horizon Despite numerous complaints about the workplace and workload, nurses expressed a hope that things will improve.
The authors note that these are long-standing problems and makes one wonder «how seriously consider the concerns of nurses in service decision makers.»
WHAT’S NEW?
However, reflect the author of this note, one thing has changed. «I was a recent graduate when he left Kramer’s book (1974) and I could identify with much of what he said. My first job was at a state-run hospital where resources are limited (one of the first things I learned was to find out where my colleagues hid their secret hideouts bedding) and the workload was very hard (in my Last year, I was the only nurse with two assistants in a medical / surgical ward of 24 beds).
So yes, the workload was tough and yes, we come to the ungrateful doctors and department heads, and yes, I wish I had more time to get used to working conditions. As new nurses only had a week of orientation and then were assigned to units where we would work.
The difference I see between my first experiences as a new nurse and what seems to be the experience of many new nurses today is the support I and other new nurses receive from senior colleagues. Maybe that’s what caused the problems at work were more bearable.
Nurses in the unit where I was working (emergency room of Bellevue Hospital) took pride in the reputation of the unit and newcomers wanted to continue what they had built. They invested in our success. I spent the first days of working with an experienced nurse who was watching me and I trained in the delivery of interventions that I did not feel comfortable or had never done. She applauded my success and always ended our experience by saying, «See You too you can do it?». The head nurse often supervised me and asked «How’s it going? «And then really listened to my answers. The support of colleagues made up for the problems-we were a team and we were all in this together. My classmates in adjacent farms they echo the sentiment of being part of a team made in whole; it was the way we were socialized into the profession.
It seems that this is far from what most new nurses experiencing today; there are too many reports of bullying behavior to dismiss it. So how does this sense of educating the next generation seems to have disappeared from many workplaces? What are we going to do about it?
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Shawn Kennedy, editorial director of American Journal of Nursing (2009)
