International Nurses Day Special: Why I left the hospital...

Today is May 12th, International Nurses Day.

According to a report by the International Council of Nurses in March 2023, the global nurse shortage is expected to reach 13 million by 2030. Therefore, the World Health Organization (WHO) has called on countries to train more professional medical and nursing personnel to cope with the "global shortage."

What is the situation in my country? Data from recent years show that there is a shortage of nurses in my country's tertiary hospitals, and the number is increasing year by year. In 2022, the magazine "Chinese Modern Nursing" conducted a survey of 10,781 young nurses in tertiary hospitals across the country and found that 33.5% of them were willing to leave, which was at a relatively high level.

On the one hand, there are problems such as an aging population, and the demand for nurses is rising. On the other hand, the turnover rate of nurses is increasing. So why do these young nurses leave? What kind of difficulties are they facing? Combined with interviews with several resigned nurses, let us find out.

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That Moment

I'm a little "broken"

Lanlan (pseudonym), born in 1995, has a bachelor’s degree. She worked as a nurse for three years before quitting her job and is now an editor.

Choosing nursing was a coincidence. After the college entrance examination, I was assigned to the nursing major. Later, during the campus recruitment, I chose a tertiary hospital in Beijing for internship. After entering this industry, my biggest feeling was that as a low-level nurse, I would face extraordinarily great pressure.

In the department, the nursing department manages the head nurse, who will select capable and experienced senior nurses to be the teaching team leader. In the absence of the head nurse, the teaching team leader can act as the head nurse. Nurses with more than three years of experience can teach interns.

Generally speaking, interns need to accept the instructions of any nurse in the department with the consent of the teaching teacher. At that time, I was rotated to the infectious department for internship. The nurse station had a rule that only one hand towel in the washbasin could be used at a time. Some interns were severely criticized for this. Later, I learned that each department has a usage index for supplies, and the use of consumables such as hand towels will affect the performance salary of nurses.

The work situation of nurses depends largely on the management style of the head nurse. After the internship, I was lucky to stay in a department with a low turnover rate in the internship hospital. The management style of the head nurse in this department is relatively gentle. If the nurses have something urgent to do or feel unwell, they can be allowed to change shifts without affecting their work. In addition, the head nurse respects every nurse equally. When encountering some obviously "unreasonable" patients, the head nurse will help the nurses solve the problem instead of simply thinking that "the fault lies with the nurse."

During one night shift, I was slapped by a patient with hepatic encephalopathy. The next morning, when the head nurse led us to the ward, she deliberately asked him to apologize to me. At that time, the head nurse said, "You slapped our daughter last night. Our daughter was also raised by her family. You should apologize to her immediately!" Thinking about it now, it is still fresh in my memory.

Later, the department changed, which led to a change of leadership. The new head nurse had a stricter management style. The shift system no longer existed, and people had to come to work even if they were not feeling well.

I also thought about whether I should hold on a little longer. However, what finally broke me was that one day when I was receiving an IV in the ward, an old man yelled at me, "Waiter!" I knew he didn't mean it, but at that moment, I was a little "broken". Not long after, I chose to resign.

On the last day in the hospital, I took a photo of the last truck of liquid as a souvenir. To this day, every time I look back, I still think of that time in the hospital. But when I talk to people around me, I often talk about: the uncle who was rescued and thanked the hospital in tears before being discharged, and a series of funny things that happened during work caused by a colleague's language error...

I have been away from the nursing industry for so long, and I seem to have let go of the bad things. If you ask me if I regret becoming a nurse, I think my answer is: no regrets.

Source: Provided by the interviewee

Worked as a nurse for 8 years

For the sake of my family, I had no choice but to leave.

Xiaoer (pseudonym), born in 1989, graduated from junior college, worked as a nurse for 8 years and resigned. She is now a kindergarten school doctor.

After the college entrance examination, I followed the advice of my parents and family members and chose nursing as my major. At that time, I didn't know much about this profession.

However, when I officially entered the nursing profession, I found that this job was completely different from what I thought. Nursing is a job that requires a high degree of concentration.

I always have a notebook in my pocket to record the tasks that need to be done, because the work of a nurse is incredibly tedious. In the ward, one nurse has to take care of seven or eight patients, and giving infusions, drawing blood, dispensing medicines/checklists, and measuring vital signs (usually blood pressure and body temperature) are all mechanical tasks to be done every day.

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Sometimes when a patient is discharged, we need to admit a new patient. We need to prepare the bed, print the bedside nursing sheet, admit the patient (observe and check the physical condition, connect ECG monitoring and oxygen, measure the waist circumference and height, etc.), and finally fill the patient information into the nursing system. We have to admit two or three patients every day. In addition to these, we also need to pick up and drop off patients who need surgery, and patients who need special care have doctor's orders to follow... Walking 20,000 steps a day is normal.

Night shifts are not easy either. Take the night shift (usually 1:30-9:30) as an example. One person has to look after the entire ward (usually 45-50 patients) in the first half of the night, and I need to check on the ward every hour. The busiest time is in the morning. Sometimes more than half of the patients need blood drawn, and I have to give medicine, measure vital signs, count urine and feces, etc. Some blood needs to be stored at low temperatures. If it is not stored well without ice, it may need to be re-drawn. So, at 4:30 in the morning, I have to start preparing for work.

The conditions of patients in the transplant department are relatively serious, so nurses need to bear greater responsibilities and risks, which puts them under greater pressure. Patients after transplantation need a lot of fluids, and some drugs must be flushed with saline or glucose before infusion. Some drugs also need to be dripped at a controlled rate. If they are infused too quickly, there will be adverse reactions, ranging from vomiting to death.

Especially in the morning, the doctor would "explode" prescriptions, and there would be a lot of fluids. The whole ward was ringing constantly, and my thoughts were easily disrupted. Just as I was about to change the fluid for bed 5, someone at the nurse station called me to measure my blood sugar. During work, I need to be mentally tense at all times, otherwise I will easily forget things.

During the night shift, nursing accidents can happen if you are not careful. For example, an old man accidentally fell and hit his head while going to the toilet late at night. I not only need to disinfect and bandage him immediately and comfort him, but also fill in the fall/fall from bed nursing record. A few days later, the department will hold a meeting to discuss and analyze the cause of the accident.

Especially after I had a child, I couldn't balance work and life for a long time, which made me think about resigning. My husband is a soldier and has been in the army all year round. When I was on the day shift, I spent a lot of energy in the hospital all day. After the night shift, I was so tired that I just wanted to sleep and had no time to take care of the child. Although my mother-in-law was around, she was old and could only take the child to walk around the community. If there was any emergency, I had to deal with it.

I am a nurse, but I am also a mother. When my child goes out and sees other children with their parents, I don't want my child to be envious. But the nature of the job as a nurse means I have to miss my child's growth. So, I decided to resign.

Now, I am a school doctor in a kindergarten. As I continue to accumulate work experience, I find that no job is easy. What is more important is an optimistic and positive attitude. It is very common to encounter difficulties at work. The key is how to deal with them. At this time, I always think of the days and nights I spent as a nurse.

Physical examination nurse

300 people undergoing medical examinations per day

Li Chu (pseudonym), born in 1995, graduated with a bachelor's degree, worked as a nurse for 3 years and resigned. She is now a township institution employee.

After the college entrance examination, my parents thought that nursing was a good and stable profession for girls, so I became a student in the nursing department of a medical university.

When graduation season came, after failing interviews at two hospitals, I summed up my experience and passed the written test, practical test and interview at the physical examination center of a provincial tertiary hospital with first place.

People inside the wall want to get out, and people outside the wall want to get in. Compared to the ward, emergency room, ICU and other departments, everyone thought that I was in the physical examination department, which was clean and relaxing. But in fact, the physical examination center is not like what everyone thinks, where you have nothing to do after drawing blood in the morning.

The hospital has a certain cost budget, and reducing the cost of nurses is the easiest. This results in one nurse completing the work that should have been done by several nurses. Therefore, although there is no night shift, the number of people we receive for physical examinations can reach 250 to 300 people per day.

In the morning, there are usually 6 nurses responsible for drawing blood. They start at around 7:30 in the morning and have to work there until lunch time. Because they have to hold the needle all the time, their hands are numb after a whole morning. The afternoon is not easy either. There are still many things to deal with, such as entering information. We have to work overtime until after 19:00 from time to time, and the working hours in a day can reach 12 hours.

In addition, there are many routine tasks in nursing work. For example, there are various types of random examinations of various sizes every month and every week, which are the kind of operational examinations that you can occasionally see on the Internet. These examinations not only test our mentality, but also take up our time.

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Interpreting the medical examination report to the examinee is also one of the nurses' job responsibilities. A nurse has to visit 100 to 200 people a day. Although ordinary examinees can send text messages, the text needs to be carefully considered and the editing content needs to be accurate and polite. Examinees with more serious conditions or VIPs need to communicate by phone. There will be some emergencies during the telephone follow-up. The most common thing is being scolded or even complained because the other party thinks that my tone of voice is wrong or the explanation is not clear at the time. There are all kinds of reasons. If there is a complaint, dozens of yuan will be deducted each time.

Now, through hard work, I have passed the examination to become a township career worker. But thinking carefully, the experience of those years as a nurse has helped me in a subtle way. Because of the particularity of physical examination work, I have some empirical summaries, and I can always pay attention to the signs of illness of my family and friends in time. So, maybe the road of nursing is not easy, but it must be paved with flowers.

In conclusion:

According to statistics from the Information and Statistics Center of the Ministry of Health, 65.2% of frontline clinical nurses work more than 10 hours a day. Overloaded work will not only accelerate the resignation of nurses, but also may lead to a decline in the quality of nursing services, posing a hidden danger to the life safety and rehabilitation quality of patients. In a sense, this should be a situation that must be broken.

On the other hand, for every patient and their family, respecting medical staff, especially nursing staff, is not only a basic courtesy of treating workers equally, but also a protection for the safety and health of themselves and their families.

On the occasion of International Nurses Day, let us say "thank you" to the angels in white. At the same time, we hope to draw everyone's attention to the work of nurses, thank them, understand them, and give them enough respect. They are the ones who hold the lamp, and this lamp is you and me, and everyone's health and life!

Review | Qiao Jiange, deputy chief nurse of the geriatric department of Shanghai Fifth People's Hospital affiliated to Fudan University