If there is one thing that I regret, it is working in healthcare.
In the beginning, I was pregnant and loved being so. I thought that if I could help pregnant women with their self esteem and the miracle that they were a part of, that would be the most rewarding experience in the world! So, I got out of the Army a few months after I delivered my daughter and knew what I wanted to do...go to nursing school!
I got into school and enrolled in prerequisites. Throughout the next few years, I completed those classes with the assumption and drive to become a nurse and work with pregnant women. Nursing school was the first roadblock. These women were more evil than drill seargants! They didn't want you to join their profession. They were not trained "teachers" so they did not deliver the material in a manner conducive to learning and retaining. Some didn't even know the material themselves!
My understanding was that nurses loved people. That they wanted everything the best for their patients. That they "cared". Nope. So totally untrue! You would think that with healthcare in the current 2010 state that it is that nurses and hospital administrators would be recruiting stronger than the Marine Corps! No. And not because they were still working the floor and feared their jobs. They were just plain evil, unskilled "teachers" (who maybe had Bachelor's Degrees but definitely not Masters or Doctorates level training!).
After the first semester, I got my CNA license and got a job on weekends at one of the local hospitals in the NICU. I had never worked in the hospital other than nursing clinicals the previous semester. I had never been a patient except for when I delivered my daughter. I knew that I appreciated everything that the nurses helped me with.
The next best thing after flunking out of school the second semester for less than .1 percent lower than the minimum grade, was to do dental assisting. I had a 4.0 GPA in that program and it was sort of a joke to even have to attend classes. I didn't necessarily want to work in general dentistry. Orthodontics had always fascinated me, especially since I never had braces on my teeth. But I didn't honestly think that it would hold my attention long enough to retire from it eventually. Some specialty offices were very difficult to get into. The girls who worked in the offices were very bitchy, cliquey, and were definitely afraid of those younger and newer. The good offices had staff that never left, the dentist paid well and the office was awesome. The bad offices, the assistant did work that they weren't licensed to perform, the dentist did bad work, and another blog full of other items went on behind the scenes. I thought I had found my niche finally in Oral Surgery, the third real office that I had worked in. The doctor was awesome. The assistants were pretty great and I thought that I could be part of their team. It didn't work out in the long run and I searched for employment in medicine again.
I was a back office assistant but didn't make enough money to maybe save anything. I was an appointment scheduler for a very large surgical office. That was a nowhere job and the person I worked with was psychotic but guess who got fired from there....yea me!
I had just hired on at the hospital and took any and all hours that they would give me in the ER. Here I learned how crappy people who work and seek treatment in medicine really are! How nurses and physicians practice regular infidelity, alcohol and drug addiction, and judge everyone that they see and treat. Not ALL of them this is a generalization and MY blog. I was exposed to the drunk and disorderly patients at ALL hours of the day and night. You knew it would be a bad day when you got to work at 0600 and could hear someone being tazed by Police within 15 or so minutes. When the radio went off at the charge nurses desk, that meant that the helicopter was coming in with something and usually it wasn't something "innocent". We had a suicide victim who lit themself on fire (or might have been helped), the handful of psych patients who would show up in any manner of states and even we knew them by name. The "Burning Man" victims would keep us busy for a week or so and if we got a patient the first day of the festival then it would make for a long week. The Rodeo week would be interesting because not all of the "traumas" would be drunken bar fights. But over all, we saw a lot of the same people for non emergent issues and that was crap. The primary care physicians would dump patients on us. Stupid people would come in for a "cough" and use the ambulance to get there. Women would come in for "abdominal pain" when they really wanted a pregnancy test and ultrasound. It was here in the ER that I really began to hate people on the whole. People who I didn't even know. People who used and abused the system and got away with it over and over again.
Unfortunately I still work in healthcare (because I am not sure what I would be good at now). With many patients who are repeat customers. Women who have baby after baby on my tax dollars. Women who brag about being on bed rest for preterm labor while you are waiting behind them in line at the grocery store. And yet they are clearly out of bed and taking risks that taxpayers will be picking up the bill for. There are prisoners who killed someone else and they are in a new suite getting top of the line treatment. What ever happened to earning your keep and paying your way? If you are in prison for "Life", then why don't we step up the number of executions and make room in the prisons and jails that way? Yet again....if you can't pay your bill, you don't get treatment. If you have one child on Welfare, then you get your tubes tied immediately (none of this wait until you are 25 crap!). If you are a prisoner, you get the bare minimum because you are not going to become a household name for receiving some miraculous new cardiac treatment. If you are under 18, you will not be keeping the baby, nor will your family, you will give it up for adoption and someone with the means and income will finally have the family they always wanted. Oh, and you will have your tubes tied since you obviously can't be trusted with any sort of responsibility.
I am a veteran. I have a college degree. I have successfully raised my child for 18 years and she is not on drugs, has never been pregnant, and has not been to jail! I have been told "no, I can't help you". I have been told "we don't have the non-custodial parents physical address and his employment can't be verified so we can't enforce payments at this time". When do I get special VIP treatment? When does everyone bow to what I have to say? What do I have to do to get someone to listen and change the "Land of Entitlement and Home of the Welfare recipients" that this country has become?
