16 Reasons Why It’s Difficult to Be a Nurse

Being a nurse is difficult. As a nurse, you work tirelessly for the health of our families, friends, and loved ones. You are relied upon to utilize your skilled and tender care by people from all over the world. While nursing has its beautiful moments, there can be a lot of challenges and difficulties that people don’t even think about.

Why is being a nurse challenging? Here are 16 reasons why it’s difficult to be a nurse:

  1. Nurses make life and death decisions daily. They are expected to make the correct decision in a wide variety of cases, and any wrong decision could be life-threatening or life-saving to their patients.
  2. A nurse may get scolded by a physician for forgetting one small thing even after remembering a hundred other things. While the one little thing that is forgotten could be a big deal, the hundreds of other things that are done correctly are often overlooked and seen as “just doing your job.”
  3. Nurses have to have lunch sometimes five minutes after cleaning a bedpan. It’s true that nurses sometimes have to deal with very displeasing situations and be expected to have an appetite halfway through their shift.
  4. A nurse must understand the classification, dosage, compatibility, and side effects for over 18,000 different medications. They might even be looked down upon for forgetting one.
  5. When obscure lab results present themselves, a nurse must understand the significance and make the decision of whether or not to call the physician. A call at the wrong time could make for an angry physician, while no call at all could result in the physician believing you made a poor decision in neglecting to inform them.
  6. A nurse has to obtain a physician’s order to give a patient an over-the-counter medication for a headache, yet they have the authority to measure pulmonary artery pressure by floating a Swan-Ganz catheter through a patient’s heart.
  7. A nurse might have to coordinate respiratory therapy, radiology, social services, physical therapy, occupational therapy, wound care, and consulting specialists for multiple patients in one shift. The memory and stamina of a nurse are unbelievable.
  8. Nurses can be on their feet for twelve or more hours straight and still be told by their personal physician that they need to get more exercise. This can be disheartening at the very least for the work a nurse puts in during their shift.
  9. A nurse could own over a dozen sets of scrubs, and every single one of them will have a stain on them. Getting a dozen new sets will invite stains within twelve shifts.
  10. When a new corporate computer system is implemented at a hospital, a nurse will be expected to learn the entire system, even if they are 60 years old and don’t own a computer. With hospital changes come the required abilities of nurses.
  11. After being a nurse for enough time, they will choose a personal physician based on how nice they are to nurses. A nurse goes through many physicians that are rude at the very least and deplorable in some cases to nurses, and they would rather have a doctor who is sincere and genuine to everyone, especially nurses.
  12. Depending on the shift, some nurses go to work when it’s still dark out, spend their entire day in the hospital, and leave work when it has already become dark again.
  13. A nurse could get floated to a new area of the hospital that they received no training for and still be expected to carry the load of a nurse who had worked the same unit for over twenty years. Nurses are sometimes treated poorly while still being expected to do more than they were trained to do.
  14. A nurse will be expected to know their patients by their diagnoses or room numbers rather than by their names. While good nurses enjoy getting to know their patients, they must be able to report on their patients using numbers and a diagnosis.
  15. Good nurses feel guilty when they must leave their patients for thirty minutes to have lunch. Nurses care so much about their patients that eating lunch can sometimes become a chore that they don’t want to do.
  16. Nurses must be able to read the physician’s handwriting, no matter how terrible it is. A doctor’s handwriting can be quite challenging to read, even by the doctor, yet the nurse is expected to be able to read it and understand it with ease.

Being a nurse is difficult

Thank you for being a nurse. While many people don’t fully understand what you go through on a daily basis, there are also many people who understand and appreciate you for what you do. Even amid many challenges, remember that you are valued, and we are grateful for your high class of healthcare service.

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