This post is part professional and part personal. I am stressing to my 20 y/o son the importance of a rainy day or emergency fund. He will spend his check down to the last $1.00 and then look to mommy for gas money, food money, or assistance. I am trying like hell not to be one of those parents. You know a helicopter parent who hovers over their adult child(ren)'s each and every move. Its a balancing act for me especially since my son is my baby, my only child. My son and I have essentially grown up together. I am a Gen-Xer and he is a Gen-Yer. Go figure! Its hard but I continue to stress to him the importance of a rainy day fund because things happen and you don't know when you will need an extra dollar or two.
Even as a single parent attending nursing school and law school, I have no shame to admit that like most college and law students, I was broke. Even then I always had a rainy day fund that I didn't touch unless it was an emergency. I keep the funds in a money market account and it took at least 3-5 days to access the money. Sometimes I would access a few hundred and after I received it a week later, I would decide that I didn't need it realy that bad. I routinely made small deposits but the account stayed out of mind and out of sight.
I still have the account and a journal of my nursing and law school days for reflection.
As a licensed professional you should always have a rainy day account because things happen in practice. Especially in the highly regulated healthcare environment of today where nurses are criminally prosecuted for unintentional medical errors which harm patients and State Nursing Board complaints are being filed against nurses by patients, plaintiff attorneys, and healthcare employers at an increasing rate.
You don't know when you may need a legal consultation or when you may have to retain an attorney. I speak with alot of nurses in the course of week who need legal representation and cannot afford legal representation. I speak with alot of nurses who would benefit from a legal consultation, workforce consultation, or a career consultation (a hundred dollars or so) and cannot afford a consultation.
The practice of law is a profession and business therefore although my heart as a RN-JD would say "take the case for free and help this nurse", our mortgage payment says NO. Damn that mortgage payment.
You are the master of your own nursing universe my friend and part of this includes being accountable and responsible. You cannot depend on your nursing employer to provide you with everything that you need anymore in healthcare. That is not the way of the world and nursing associations can only do so much because most nurses don't even belong to nursing associations (but you can best believe this is the first place most of us call when a legal issue arises!).
You are your own risk manager for your nursing practice, your nursing career, and your nursing license. You have to actively manage the risks associated with nursing practice in this day and age and sometimes this requires payment of a fee. Damn those lawyers.
I really think nursing schools and colleges should start instructing the next generation of nurses on business and finance principles to foster and develop more of an independent contractor and business owner mindset for nurses instead of the traditional employer-employee mindset that permeates nursing. The Sleeper Must Awaken. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087182/quotes
I wish, oh how I wish that I could hit the lottery for 250 million dollars. Then I would be able to provide FREE to low cost legal representation, counseling, and advising to ANY and EVERY one who contacted my office. I could hire three busloads of attorneys and build a nurse license defense dream team from investigation to the appeal in all fifty states available to ALL nurses. Oh how I wish....
Until that day, purchase your own professional liability insurance with a license defense protection benefit and start a rainy day fund.
Comments