I'm Blue ...

Hmm .... I took Dr. Deb's advice, and went here to see what color my brain is. I know that y'all are all waiting with bated breath, so without further adieu ....

Your Brain is Blue

Of all the brain types, yours is the most mellow.You tend to be in a meditative state most of the time. You don't try to think away your troubles.Your thoughts are realistic, fresh, and honest. You truly see things as how they are. You tend to spend a lot of time thinking about your friends, your surroundings, and your life.

Huh???? What????? Am I REALLY mellow???? I think not! I may hide it well, but I am about as Type A as a person can get, and Type As are far from being considered "mellow".

The only exception to the "typical" Type A profile is that I am habitually late. I have tried for so many years to overcome my tardiness, but I just can't do it. I used to be waaayyy early all the time, but then I married someone who was late ALL the time. It rubbed off. We weren't married that long, but I never overcame the tardiness. I don't care how much ahead I set the alarm, or whether I have 3 hours or 30 minutes. I'm still late. Any suggestions for me on taming the tardiness beast?

Now on to work stuff ...

What do you do when you are Type A and OCD like I am, and as a logical consequence, an overachiever? I was in nursing management for awhile, but got tired of the rhetoric and the obsession of Mrs. Boss with money. But the trouble is, is now that I'm a staff nurse, they haven't forgotten that I do a good job. So what do they do? They heap on more responsibility and tasks. Being the overachiever that I am, I want to do well on these tasks, but I'm burning out. I've told them that if they don't let up some on me, my burnout will turn white hot and I'll spontaneously combust. If that happens, They'll have one bigass pile of ashes to sweep up. So far, they haven't listened. I'll give them a couple of more chances. I am copying the following from one of my very first posts, because it's very pertinent to the way I have been feeling again lately ...

I was part of middle management at Work for 8 years, but could no longer take the two-faced bullshit they try to feed the staff. I finally vacated that post and became a staff nurse once again, and I have greater peace of mind for having done so.

I suppose that the philosophy or environment at Work is not really much different than at a majority of other places. Those in the proverbial ivory towers of Administration and Corporate offices (yes ... Work is but one facility in a system of many facilities - 12 in my city alone, with two new ones opening in the near future) have NO earthly idea of what actually goes on at the grass roots level. In fact, I'd wager to say that not one executive has donned a set of scrubs and joined us peons for any more than an hour at a time since maybe the 1980's.

Am I bitter? Hell yes, I am! I got into nursing to take care of patients, and I do a damn fine job of it when I'm not doing double or triple charting, or cleaning the patient rooms myself. Everyone knows that nurses are the backbone of healthcare. Why, then, are we treated like the dregs at Work? We are highly trained professionals who have saved many a patient's life and many a doctors' ass on many occasions. All we want is the time and supplies necessary to properly care for our patients. We spend 8, 12, or 16 hours at a time with our patients as opposed to the mere 10 minutes (if that) that the docs spend. But ... we are to cow tow to them, give them what they want when they want it. Work has a huge "good old boy" network, and the powers that be perpetuate and encourage it. He who screams the loudest gets what he wants the quickest.

I think that a HUGE factor (in fact, maybe the biggest factor) in perpetuating all of this negativity among the ranks is the Chief Nursing Officer. The "Chief" at Work is a BSN who went on for an MBA. No MSN. An MBA. In my opinion, therein lies the problem. The bean counting mindset of the MBA made her forget that she is actually a nurse. And we come back full circle to the bottom line ... the almighty dollar. Not so surprising now, is it?

The question now becomes "How are we going to get ourselves out of this nightmare?" Hell if I know. I love my life's work, but the state of things makes me sad. Sad that I don't have time to REALLY talk to a family member who is scared to death (and rightfully so) that their loved one will not survive their head injury or brain bleed. Sad that I don't have the time to sit and hold the hand of a patient who has just been told that the headaches are from an inoperable tumor. Sad that I have to ignore some patients because I have to transport other patients to tests out of the department, answer the phones, enter orders into the computer, or file lab results because the powers that be have abolished entire departments and in the name of cost effectiveness have assigned these tasks to the nurses

Ok ... back to the color of my brain. How does all of this relate? After reading my little repeat rant, can you say that my ideas are fresh? Not really. Are they honest? Yep. Are they realistic? Yep. Does it seem like I think alot about my life and my surroundings? Yep. I'm definitely a meditative thinker. Do I try to think away my troubles? Not really. I think about them, but in terms of how to solve them for myself. BUT ... that doesn't mean I'm not amenable to suggestions, because we're all in this damn boat together!
~RWS