[Parker]

My friend is an RN with 20 years of critical care experience. She's worked days and nights, 8 and 12-hr shifts, hospitals, clinic, etc. She's rarely called in sick, not a job hopper, cares for her patients, respectful of her employers, appears to be someone we might all like to have for our nurse. She tells me that nursing is the most difficult, stressful job, that there are no good nursing jobs. She says nurses often discuss the poor working conditions of long shifts with too much to do and not enough time to do things in, that patients pay the price for an overworked exhausted stressed-out nurse, and that she's concerned about the future of healthcare in a cost-cutting world. She says the pay is good but hardly worth the toll it takes on her, that she'd gladly take less for better working conditions. I told her to get another job but she says that according to the nurses she's worked with over the years, and her own personal experience, the grass isn't any greener on the other side of the fence.

So I started asking around to some of the other nurses I know. They say the same things. Yikes! Makes me concerned about getting sick and needing to be in a hospital. What do you all think? What do the nurses you know say?