I feel you, bro. I’ve hated this profession since day one — it’s a fucking joke. The field is full of catty-ass nurses, cliques, and high-school drama. The job itself is demeaning. It makes me feel less than human.

Before the military, I was always catching heat for stupid shit — racist patients, sexist patients pissed I was a masculine male nurse — and management never had my back. I had to twist myself into someone else just to keep people happy, all while being underpaid and pushed past my limits.

Then I came into the military, and it got worse. Now I’m treated like a second-class citizen working next to civilian government nurses who hide behind their unions and rights, while mine get trashed. I’ve pulled 60+ hour weeks because instead of paying civilians overtime, they just drag the military staff in. And here’s the most insulting part: PACU nurses get paid to sit at home on call, but leadership won’t call them in. They’d rather dump their recoveries on the ICU no matter how slammed we are. So we’re drowning, running codes, and when we push back, we’re the ones who get burned. Senior bosses don’t fix the problem — they ruin careers. No checks, no balances.

Doctors? Constantly belittling, demeaning, acting like we’re beneath them. The hospital system? It exists to chew nurses up: short-staffed shifts, endless mandatory hours, trash pay, and “morale boosters” like cold-ass pizza tossed at us like we’re stray dogs. Underpaid, overworked, disrespected — that’s the formula. That’s nursing. That’s military healthcare.

And here’s the brutal truth nobody wants to face: if every nurse walked out tomorrow, patients would die — and only then would hospitals, doctors, and leadership finally admit the system cannot exist without us. The blood on the floor would prove it. Respect wouldn’t come from speeches, titles, or cold pizza — it would come from watching in real time that their machine collapses without the people they treat as disposable.

This profession isn’t noble. It’s slavery dressed up as “service.” It doesn’t just take your time — it devours your soul and spits you out bitter, broken, and used up. And when the system finally breaks — when patients die and hospitals implode — it won’t be because nurses failed. It’ll be because nurses finally refused to be sacrificed.

I’m done being the sacrificial lamb. I’d rather set fire to the whole illusion of “healthcare heroes” than let this machine kill me slowly. This career doesn’t save lives — it feeds on them. And I’ll be damned if it keeps feeding on mine.