rant about my coworker...

Okay so the second to last time I was on my floor, it was pretty busy. I admit, the charge nurse didn't assign patients the way she should have. One of the RN's had 2 patients the entire day while the CN had 5. She was complaining that she was very stressed out and didn't have time for a break. In that case, you shouldn't have given yourself so many patients while the other RN's were waiting! That was an error on her part.

I do like working with this nurse, however. She always has "fun" things for me to do - blood draws, dressing changes, wound cultures, etc. That is the main reason why I wanted this job was to get EXPERIENCE in things like that. Half of the time I feel like I'm a "glorified" nursing assistant. The one nurse who had 2 patients kept telling me not to help the CN and that they needed help on the other hand. There was another aide on the other side and he immediately got talked to when he went down to my side to answer a call light, being told NOT to go down to my side and that they needed him on their side. You have *2* patients.

The CN came up to me and told me to do a dressing change (although simple - xenaderm then apply mesalt to the area), get wound cultures on her big toe and then wrap the toe. Right after she told me that, the RN with 2 patients got a new admit. She came up to me and said, "hey, can you get vitals on this patient?" I looked at her because I was on my way to the other pt with all of the dressing supplies and wound culture swabs in my hand, and without me saying a word the RN said, "by the way, that trumps what the CN said. go get vitals."

That pissed me off. What pissed me off even more is that my roommate is a new RN at the hospital I work at. She is currently going through her orientation and yesterday they were going through a list of what techs can and cannot do. One of the things we ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO DO is get vitals on a new admit, because vitals are part of an assessment and that is the RN's job. I get them anyway, but I just think it was really rude for that nurse to say that.

Ever since then she has rubbed me off the wrong way. I worked with her again yesterday but pretty much ignored her lol...because she is orienting a new grad and she is to the point where the new grad has taken over care and this nurse just sort of oversees it - so every time I had to report something, I went to the new grad.

Some nurses are appreciative of my work; others are like "go do this. go do that." I am *ONE* person - I cannot be in all of these places at once. I don't seem to get this from the nurses in the MSICU or ICU stepdown that I tend to float to a lot.

I have to go back to work today, but only for four hours. That's the nice thing about being a tech - we can come in for shifts like that or come in at odd times if we have class or something (one time I came in from 5-11).

I also just got my course information for peds (but of course nothing else for the others). Seems like a lot of busy work to me!!