Retirement...Because I just couldn't do it anymore.

By the time I retired in February, I had been an RN for more than 25 years. Along the way, I earned my BSN and MSN. I had planned on retiring on January 1st, but after the election in November of 2024, I cancelled my retirement plans indefinitely. I thought I could keep going for another year or two, or until we decided it was time to get the fuck out of Trump's America.

I thought I could do it, but...I just couldn't. Between hospital administration pretending everything was just peachy, the declining quality of nursing care coming from the floors and ICU's to our unit for procedures and, in the backgound of it all...the drive for revenue. From my end, this came in the form of tests...expensive and often inappropriate tests...being ordered by ED physicians. Too often, those tests were ordered in the total absence of any documentation justifying the order. There were no labs...no EKG's...no progress note documenting the rationale for the exam. And I worked for a large, ostensibly, non-profit healthcare system, whose focus was on revenue. It is a non-profit in name, and for tax purposes, only.

But the system was, and still is, rotten. Starting with executive officers more concerned with their annual bonuses that with patient care, patient safety,and adequate staffing. They were running nursing as lean as they could pre-COVID. It was during COVID that many of our most senior and experienced nurses left the profession entirely. This left a huge vacuum in nursing care as the seasoned, experienced nurses who left were exactly the ones need to train and orient new nurses. In the wake of COVID, all bets were off. At that point, more than 60% of our nursing staff had been there for 5 years or less. Nurse on Medical units were routinely expected to take up to 10 patients (best practices calls for a maximum of 6) and ICU nurses were routinely expected to take up to 4 patients (best practices calls for a maximum of 2). And, in both cases, patient acuity was not taken into account. Anyone who knows nursing knows that it takes two to five years to polish a new grad RN into a compentent and confident nurse, especially in the ICU setting. But the very nurses who those new nurses could turn to with questions were gone. And administration made no bones about it, their focus was on retaining nurses who had been with the system for less than 15 years. And there were damn few of us who had been there longer, left.

As I said, I thought I could do it for another year or two. But I simply could not stand to work for a healthcare system or hospital which had so little regard for its nurses and the patients who came to them seeking care. And, it's no better at any other healthcare system in the area. So, I retired. I left behind a work "family" I cared about, work that I excelled at, and the patients I cared for. And, since my mother passed, there's nothing to hold us back when it comes time to get the fuck out of Trump's America.