Letters to the Editor

It has been said by some nursing schools that the new nurse will get an orientation to the floor and they can learn those sorts of tasks at that time. With staffing so poor in general, floors will hire whoever applies. The lucky experienced nurse who gets to orient the new graduate gets the honor of teaching the graduate basic nursing care. There is just not enough time to teach them what they should have learned in the three to four years they spent in school.

I wanted to be a nurse since I was 4 years old (my dad tape-recorded me around my fourth birthday, so I have proof). I worked in the ICU from 1993-97, then an outpatient-surgery center after the hostile takeover (oops, I mean merger) of Jewish to BJC (I was a Jewish employee). I came back to the ICU after six months, and the changes in just six months were dramatic and more than I could deal with.

I no longer work on the floor doing direct patient care. I am now doing cardiology research. Until the health-care climate returns to actually caring for the patient, not the insurance company or the hospital, research is where I'll be.

Jane Steffens,