Moved up to the “Big City” in October. Today I was fired by a woman with a smile on her face.
My biggest complaints were being isolated from my peers, not having enough work to do, and not receiving feedback on my work performance directly.
I was accused of working outside of scope, not being able to separate my personal feelings from work, and not responding to doctors in a timely fashion. No specific or documented instances of any of these accusations were provided to me.
So now I’m alone, in a way more expensive city, with about the same amount it cost to move here left in the bank.
I think I’m done with healthcare. As a trans person, working inside of it is fucking awful, especially in large hospital organizations. I don’t think it helps I graduated from nursing school in 2020.
What now? This was my dream job, at an organization (I thought) had their shit together. It was a nightmare on the inside - no support, no community. Call staff couldn’t “handle” trans patients, so we have to call a separate line that might have someone call you back.
I came up with so many ideas, ways to improve, best practices we aren’t following. Patients getting dead named and misgendered in charts, at the pharmacy, to their face. Asleep in the OR during surgery.
I’ve never been more confused about a job ending. I literally said I would do anything, work overtime, adapt my style, learn 6 different specialties, anything I could to help.
They never even listened to me. Why did they bring me all this way just to ignore me?
The worst part, I think, is that I don’t know if I will ever really trust another human the same way. I thought this was a safe place where I could talk openly about what was deficient, and how to alleviate that. But I did that, and they didn’t want to hear it, and now I’m on my own again.
I really thought we could build something truly special. I guess I’m just disappointed I’ll never get a chance to see what that could have been.
You might not like to hear this, but the workplace is not the appropriate venue to pursue personal interests. You’re hired to work, not to redefine how the workplace operates. Your coworkers are coworkers, not potential community members. It’d be different if you were hired on as a consultant for some of the specific issues you brought up, but you were hired as a nurse. Then you complained you didn’t have enough work while apparently pulling double time to document and consider a whole mess of issues that you were never directed to look into. If you look at it from your bosses perspective, you practically walked up and handed them a “reasons to get rid of me” list. The squeaky wheel might get the grease, but a bent nail always gets hammered. Never stand out too much for better or worse
The job was to help develop the program and department, at least that’s how they sold it to me. I was specifically told management is receptive to input from my position, and it was well within my purview to consider these issues. And, given that I don’t think ever worked a full 40 hour week, I wouldn’t say I did anything “double time”.
I did give them a reasons to get rid of me, in that I showed there wasn’t actually enough clinical level work for a nurse at this position, at least with how they structured it