Pros
Entering a type of Nursing in your early fifties after doing Hospital Med/Surg, OB, Geriatrics, Psych and also twenty years of experience in both Nursing Homes and Retirement Villages is daunting. Nurses are taught to help you heal bot help you die. My experience here taught me death is just another part of life just like adolescence, childbirth, menopause it is the inevitability we all face but its a mystery and therefore shrouded in fear.
Cons
A place which should be such a comforting atmosphere foe end of life care fraught with an uncaring management which focuses more on for profit and less on family and patient needs. Nurses work constantly understaffed where only three holidays are recognized a year and you must work two of the three and are begged to work the third but not with holiday pay. Staff is hurt physically for lack of help with bariatric patients as well as combative end of life patients that require more than a two person staff on an IPU. Morale is low and often non existent as an exhausted nursing "team" is overworked with no hopes of a raise and you receive a letter thanking you for forfeiting a pay increase to help the company make payroll. They keep evaluation ratings low so as not to have you merit a cost of living annual increase and the managers are not supportive and berate rather than encouraging. Despite this nurses continue to give excellent care as much as their tired bodies will allow.