the clock strikes midnight... as the dream slips through your head... this is no dress rehearsal... there is no second chance...

Saturday, April 21, 2007

a friend told me that we can't possibly understand how others feel if we are not there to experience it..............and ............ we never thought that we will be paid that miserably and we were being over-worked, with only 1 rest day per week.

and............ it is not that we got to rest on the 7th day after 6 days of hard work.. on bad situations, we struggled 8 days then, scheduled for rest on 9th day.

morning shifts starts at 7. another friend of mine stayed somewhere far in the west.. has to get up as early as 0500hrs i think so that she can reach work by 0645hrs. She didn't usually have to do this.. but because lately, her car which she used to drive to work daily, which she parked at her usual Staff car park, was being clamped. Reason being that she is just a Staff Nurse. Staff Nurses not entitled for a lot. She was told not to drive to work since there's no lots for SNs.. by the security officers.

these are some of the things i hate about my work and workplace
1- unpredictable Off-days
2- miserable pay for the amount of work we do
3- no parking lots for SNs
4- only 2 set of scrubs given.. wear 2-3 times then wash.. where's the infection control..?
5- difficult to take leave

more to list down..

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

The starting pay has been printed in a lot of materials. What makes people think that they are going to get more just because they have worked 2 years or more in an unrelated industry?

Shift work is a cornerstone of the healthcare industry. 7-3, 1-9, 9-7 has been there for over 50 years. How can one not even consider that when signing up to join the industry?

There are many hospitals in the west and central areas of Singapore. If one wants to choose a hospital in the east when they are staying in the west and then complain about it later, there might not be so much sympathies.

Anonymous said...

To Vicious Rumours:

I shared your sentiments in that nurses have to work long consecutive days before etting their days off, as i am also a nurse and i have even worked for 10 consecutive days before my day off. Somehow, i felt that the nursing culture in Singapore is such that we are expected to work long hours and without gettinh any OT pay as this has long been passed down from the generations before us. It's not te pay that i am stressing but the purpose of shift work, isn't it supposed to takeover whatever was left undone and to passed on to the next shift? However, this does not seems to be the case in some situtations as some nurses may want the previous shift nurse to complete it before handing over to them. This defeats the purpose of shift work already as work is never ending in the nursing world.

As for the case of your friend, i also felt that your friend should have chosen the hospital of choice carefully before joining that hospital and location is one of the factors that your friend should take into. Or else, it will means extra time spend in travelling before and after work, when you can actually use that time to have otheer leisures.

Anyway, don't give up in nursing and learn as you go along and you will improve. Think back at the reason why you chose to join nursing initially. Would you rather be in your previous job or would you still consider nursing as a career switch few yeasr back. Since you are already in the line of nursing, take it as a learning experience, this may be a path that you have to go through in your journey of life.

Take care.

ViXen said...

thanks for dropping by ...

about choice of hospital.. has never been an issue at all cos, some of them own a car and driving is their mode of transport..so it's convenient, distance is not a problem.
in the past as nursing students, they are allowed to park, but when they are confirmed SNs, they are not able to do so..
the issue is that SNs here are not entitled for staff carpark. Aren't SNs' staff too?
It may not apply to other hospitals, but why can't they have balloting system or something like that, so as it's fair for all staff.

totally agree about the shift work and stuff, and it's not all about the pay.. it's just that it doesn't tally. Only those in this line, at present, understands why.

one thing for sure, the passion is still alive, but it is the system that's drowning us down.

thanks for all yr comments :)

Anonymous said...

vixen, these people won't understand what u mean, coz their are not in your shoes.

1) It is not the salary, it is the promised the hospital made. We are not getting what was promised initially.

2) Shift work is expected, but, we don't work 7-3, 1-9, 9-7. We usually worked 7-5 X 5days & 1-1030 X 1 day per week. Sometimes without break! Coz we have to complete everything before passing over to the next shift.

3) It is not the distance, it is the discrimination against SN and below. People at a lower position cannot own a vehicle? So, should we give different treatment to all the subsidised class patients???

4) How much time is spend nursing the patients? Most of the time we are just nursing our documents!

Don't be disappointed... I thought we have plans? Our long and short term plans... to motivated us... hehe... - U know who I am lah ;)

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