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.

  • streetfestival
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    9 months ago

    I’m really sorry you were put through that. In my experience hospitals are very power hierarchy-centric workplaces and physicians and administrators are very cishet and very privileged, leaving ample room for discrimination. This is probably a pretty stark contrast to the values that led you to pursue nursing.

    You were unjustly discriminated against, but you have a good degree. My encouragement would be to try to lick your wounds and find another nursing job. I’ve heard nurses say that primary care settings are better jobs than hospitals, and public health nursing sounds neat too. If you can get a role in a service dedicated to caring for transpeople, might that be the dream, dream job?

    Rooting for you <3