nurses are tired

This comment about my last blog post really struck me:

Anonymous
"We don't rotate shifts in the south. There is no way I could do that at my age. I've had maybe 2 good managers in my whole career. Now it's a business and nurses who are managers are kiss ass sell outs and mostly newer nurses management can mold. We see 400 a day some days and we are stuffing these mofo's into every nook and cranny in the dept just to move the meat. No time to look at labs or even talk to ppl. Of course we advertise no wait time. What a joke."

It made me sad.  It pretty much describes  nursing in a nutshell.  I have the feeling this person is probably about my age.  They have been a  nurse for some time. They have to keep the job to make a living,  they have  a lot of time in, because what the fuck else are they gonna do at this point?  They have good hours, seniority, finally a decent wage.  They are stuck.  They ain't going anywhere.

It makes me sad that nurses have to feel like this. We work so damn hard. Our job is impossible. It is thankless. It is so fucking exhausting. We are all so damn mad about it but too tired to do anything about it.  We go to work and feel out of control for many reasons.  The environment itself is pretty much always out of control.  Its the nature of ER and nursing in general.   We feel like we don't have any control over our jobs. People who sit in offices control our jobs.  JCAHO and the like control our jobs.  Potential liability control our jobs.  At some point we give up.  We tell ourselves whatever. We just try to do our jobs and go home.

The thing is it eats away at our soul, all of this.  The anger, the mental, physical and emotional exhaustion.  I have been doing this a long time.  I don't think I'll
ever figure out how to be at peace with this job.  I don't think its possible because I am human. I'm not a robot.