Math Skills.

OK. So I'm the type of person who tries to follow all the rules to the best of my ability. Especially at work...I don't want to give my boss or anyone else a reason. But lately, it seems like if they don't have one, they'll find one.

One of my coworkers and the beast of a charge nurse on the floor were talking a few feet away from me. It was an open conversation and I was confused, so I tried to clarify my misunderstanding by asking the charge nurse what the protocol was. Here's how it went:

Nurse 1: I took a verbal order from Dr. X for blah blah blah.
Beast: OK, just write it down.
Me: Can we take verbal orders now? (truly confused)
Beast: No. We're just covering her a**. You know better than that. Why do you ask stupid questions? Is it because you think you're better than the other nurses? Well, let me tell you, you're not.
Me: Actually, things change pretty quickly here and I think you know that I've had my a** chewed for doing the same thing even after I phoned the doctor to make the order official as a telephone order, which technically would have covered my a** in the first place. So I was wondering if the protocol changed and I had not realized it. I wanted to make sure that I was up to date on our protocols. And I think you know me well enough by now to know that I don't think I'm better than anyone here or anywhere else. I don't ask questions for any other purpose than to make sure that I'm not making a mistake.


And I walked off.

Why is it that I can try to the best of my ability to do by job by the book, as I'm held to, yet others don't have to? I try to keep my head down and simply...clock in, do my job, and clock out. I take my job seriously, I treat my patients better than most of my cohorts, have been nominated for the presidents award on multiple occasions in my short tenure of 7 months. Why is it that I get written up more than any other new employee, yet have made less errors, never called in, picked up extra shifts because the unit needed an extra nurse, stayed late and clocked in early.

Despite trying to keep to myself, I am still pulled into some kind of drama. What's the deal? I am just trying to get through another 89 days without being written up for anything...then hopefully I can transfer to another unit. I love the hospital I work for, just hate the unit. I am beginning to loathe my job, and I promised myself I never would...no matter what I had to do to prevent it.

I know that one of my "downfalls" is that I take other people's situations into consideration. Like tonight, a doctor called in discharge orders for a patient at shift change. I could have been a total b**ch of a nurse and left it for the night nurse. But no...I can't do that. I worked on the d/c paperwork while she assessed the patients and set up everything to get this patient out...from removing the Foley, iv and telemetry monitor to calling the social worker and calling an ambulance for transport to her residence. It's just the type of person I am.

So because of the fact that I respect others and treat others like I would like to be treated, I get screwed over constantly...how the heck does 2+2=1???? Someone please tell me...because the last time I checked, I was pretty amazing at math.

-Gray