[tk3100]

I was scheduled to work the weekend of halloween a couple of years ago. I went to a halloween party at my friends house that I worked with at the time. I stayed until about 0100 and then went home. Many others who should have worked the next day called in. I know this because they told me they were going to at the party and were still there when I left. Like a good girl, I went to work the next day. I was very tired but functional. Someone told my manager that I came to work with a hangover!!!! I don't even think I drank anything that night!! Thankfully I had known my manager since high school and she just laughed. But really????!!!!

[suejara]

I work in a pediatrician's office and received my 3 month review there as a new nurse. My review was great but one doctor had to make a stupid comment that I couldn't believe was actually taken seriously enough by our practice manager to become part of my "record".

Dr. X stated that I "must be careful about joking around patients i.e. was singing Old MacDonald had a Farm within earshot of patient with same last name". I told my boss that firstly I wasn't singing, I was probably humming the tune, secondly I would never purposely try to offend a patient & thirdly was probably huming the stupid song because we had some stickers that we give to the kids with barnyard animals that say...you guessed it "Old MacDonald had a Farm". We always give out stickers as a prize to our pedi patients, especially after they receive shots.
My boss then says well you have to be careful with what you say given the nature of our practice. I says yeah, we work on babies and little children. How inappropriate of me!!! I have been humming "Little bunny Foo Foo"ever since.

[AngelfireRN]

I also do Occupational Health, and we got an email the other day from out boss that stated that some employees were complaining about nurses telling them about their own illnesses (The nurse's illness). It also stated that we were not being "professional". I always love to hear that one.

The other nurses and I discussed it, and no one could think of anyone who would talk about personal illnesses, except to say, "Oh, I have that, have you tried this? It works for me."

Well, I'm not shy, so I asked her. She said it was ME! Said 2 employees said the same thing, but she could not tell me what I was supposed to have told them I had. She even said, "Well, I have heard you.", but could not tell me what I was supposed to have said. The professionalism thing was directed at us all. Again, no specifics.

I am currently looking for another job. I can see the writing on the wall as well. False accusations without proof or corroboration are a BIG tip-off to me. I guess the fact that they know I am leaving (graduate school student, will leave after graduation) works against me. Oh, well.

[RNcDreams]

I was once told that someone complained that I was being too "aggressive" when speaking to one of the doctors...

And she could not tell me what the situation was, who complained, or what it was that I said.



How are you supposed to evaluate yourself if the person reprimanding you can't even state the details!?!?

Siiiiiigh.



*Letting it go*

[rgroyer1RNBSN]

Oh yeah get this one, I am a shift supervisor in SICU and ER, well once in ER I had this patient who was circling the drain, anyways he was having an MI, and we were trying to stabilize him, well the family was wanting to come back, and I told the unit secretary not to let them back until we stabilized him, well anyways she lets them back, yes she lets them back when Im pushing adenosine and the guy goes flat line from the adenosine and they see it and start freaking that I and the doc have killed him, well the doc and I got that part straightened out, so anyways I take the US aside to reprimand her and lecture her, well she gives the NM this bs story about me yelling and screaming at her and I get written up for "Horizontal Violence", well lets just say I and the CEO of nursing are good buddies, and that write up got taken out of my file and the NM got reprimanded by her and the US got her butt canned.

[santhony44]

"Your office (private office, not a patient care area) is too cluttered."

This was written on my annual evaluation.

So I asked the manager "Do you mean I have too much personal stuff (like family pictures, personal mementos) in there?"
"Well, no."
"Is it because I have a mini fridge in there?"
"Well, no."
"Is it my little wire cart where I keep my snack stash (like soup and crackers, because I usually ate lunch at my desk while working on charts)?"
"Well, no."
Hmmm.
So I finally said "Well, I need you to come to my office and show me exactly what you're talking about, because I'm not understanding what you're saying here."

Evidently he had no idea what he was talking about either, because it never happened. I'm not sure who told him to put that item on my evaluation.

I'd seen the handwriting on that particular wall too, and was already looking around for greener pastures.

Oh, and the other "ding" I got on that evaluation?

"You eat in your office."

I asked him "Are you aware that I usually eat lunch in there while I'm working on charts?" He just got that deer-in-the-headlights look, because of course he wasn't, because of course he was always outta there by 11:55.

[sharrie]

I was called into my managers office a couple of years ago. I was told that it was a serious complaint so I was very worried.

It turned out that my standard of care was not up to scratch on one night shift. I was mortified so I questioned further as I remembered the night clearly. It had been extremely busy, I was in charge and we had one 40 year old have a cardiac arrest and we resuscitated him on and off for 5 hours. During this time another lady obstructed her tracheostomy which left us with a respiratory emergency and another man decided to get a good dose of ITU psychosis and start throwing syringes, swabs and any thing else he could get his hands on at the nursing staff which meant we ended up have to call security and sedate him.

All pateints survived - major achievment for a nights work

The complaint was that I had failed to make sure the trolleys in the unit were adequatley stocked with 20 ml syringes which meant the unit manager had to stock up in the morning.




Just as well UK hospitals rarely fire thier staff because by the time I left her office she knew exactly what I thought of her priorities

[lupin]

In the nursing field, I had a complaint against me because I did not let the Nurse Manager know that a traveling nurse on my floor was showing naked pics of his wife. I didn't even work on the same shift as him and therefore was not there when he was showing the pics. Once it was sorted out I didn;t work with him that night the nurse manager said he would "disregard" it. The traveler got fired.
As a medical receptionist, during my annual review my immediate manager gave me a great review but said our new office manager had a serious grievance with my tardiness. Well, when asked how many times I had been late, she stuttered out that the new office manager had seen me come in from the parking lot at 0800 one time. I said ok, one time in a year is a serious grievance? My manager said that the new office manager would call me in to talk to me about it. So when she called me in and I came in the office, she had no idea who I was. So I asked her if she didn't recognize me how did she know it was me that was late? She couldn't answer me but it still stuck on my record.
When I worked in childcare and the 75-yr old manager of the place decided she didn;t like me anymore after working there a year, she would call me in daily for things like "playing with the children too much, or feeding them too much (I wasn't the cook who made up the plates), not writing down when they had last had a diaper change on our record (she had the record in front of her and it was recorded)." I took it for about a month and then when she started screaming at me that I was a "complete idiot and should be sterilized from having any children of my own" (exact quote) in front of three parents who had come to pick up their children, I quit on the spot and walked out. One of the women I worked with immediately quit too, saying if that was how we could all expect to be treated then she was leaving too. Later when I was working part-time at Walmart I saw two of the same three parents in there and the all had withdrawn their kids from that child care facility. They said that anyone who would speak to another adult that way, they didn't want around their children. Much later that child care place went out of business because the 75 yr old owner was sited for multiple state infractions. One child had been seriously hurt because this lady had had a stroke at work, wouldn't go home or to the hospital and dropped a kid because of weakness on one side.
With all complaints, I try to figure out if I'm really at fault. If I did something intentionally or not, I own up to it. It is easier than lying or making excuses, and I take my dues for it. If it is crap, I fight it all the way.

[Shimmergirl]

I work at a teen residential psych center night shift 7p-7a. Well last night we had a night from hades. I had been off for 7 days, and come back to find out one of the kids on my unit has MRSA (which I had been saying he needed cultures for about three weeks, as a healthy teen does not get multiple abscess type infections that reoccur even with abx tx) I was the one that documented all this and FINALLY got the NP to do cultures and sure enough...MRSA!! Did I get a "thank you", or credit at all? NO. Not that I was expecting it, but it would have been nice.
So that aggravated me...but then we have a code red one of the girls units. A girl had gotten a lighter from somewhere and set a book on fire in a bathroom. Chaos ensued...fire alarms going off, evacuations having to happen, fire dept, etc. So the CEO of the place comes up and is dealing with stuff. Now this is not my unit, but I am helping the nurse whose unit it is deal with paperwork and organizing everything. My handwriting is on a lot of stuff, and I did the nurses chart checks and a bunch of other stuff to free her up to deal with the crisis. The CEO saw me, introduced himself and asked what unit I worked. I told him and he asked if all my staff was there, and I said yes, and told him I had checked the unit and all was fine, not to worry. Later I made copies of paper work for this same CEO.

Well fastforward to tonight at 6pm. I slept all day, and wake up to a voice mail on my phone from my DON asking me to call her. So I do, and she says she got "blasted at 8:15 this am for me being on the other nurses unit visiting for two hours. And that I had told the CEO not to worry about my unit" ******* I instantly politely corrected her and told her I was helping with the crisis, I had done paperwork, and even made copies for the man himself. And I also corrected her on what I did say. He asked me who my staff was on my unit, and I told him and said I had checked on my unit and everything was fine and not to worry about it. She kinda laughed and said okay, I will clear it with him.

******* I go to help with a crisis and I am VISITING?? See if I help out anymore... Well I will, cause the nurse I was helping is a friend, and we all work together to make work easier for all. But still....GRRRR

[zamboni]

Happened to me today. I got called into our new director's office, and before I even sat down, I kinda smiled and said, "This is about the folks in Room 3 last night, isn't it?"

We were swamped last night. We have 14 beds, and 10 of them were holds for upstairs, with some pts waiting over 24 hours for a bed. The ER people are spilling over in the waiting room, and the halls are packed. By some hard work on our folks part, and other staff actually pulling together, we actually start getting room assignments! Yay! We share the news with the "campers", and inbetween treating MIs and hip FXs, we're trying to get people moved (No txp people by this time, we had to move our own). Some of us are working on 16 hours by staying over to help. Well, the family in 3 catches me as I go by and demand to know why it's taking so long because they've been waiting for 2 whopping hours to be moved (not true, they had only been admitted an hour before). I tried so hard to maintain and explain that we were moving folks as fast as we could, but I didn't know when their turn was because they weren't my patient and I wasn't up on where or when their assignment was. They kept on, glaring at me and continuing to be moved NOW! Finally, having way too many of my own patients to deal with, I shrugged and said, "We're only human." and walked out. Yeah, my bad.

So they followed through on their threat to complain about me to the House Sup, who emailed the complaint to my director. And there I sit in sin.

After I take my butt chewing, I ask Mr Director if the House Sup had sent him anything else about last night, and he says no. So I tell him that less than an hour before The Incident in 3, the House Sup had been called down by one of my patients. The youngish man had come in the night BEFORE to proudly accept his new award for SVT. Yeah, not proudly, the guy was terrified. I spent hours the night he came in, and then the next day and night when he was still there, calming his fears, educating him, translating medical lingo, and keeping him from going AMA. He REALLY wanted to leave, and I single handedly kept him talked down. When we were getting ready to finally move him, House Sup walked in per the request of him as his family. I braced myself for the stream of complaints for having to live for almost two days on that stretcher, and while that did happen, the pt and fam all made it very clear that they would have left long before if not for little old me.

Do you think she mentioned THAT to my boss? Oh hell no.

To my director's credit, he didn't hang me. I got a lecture on not telling patients that we have no beds (so I guess I should lie...or better yet, just tell them I'm too lazy to move them up?). Whatever. I'm not mad at him....I'll take my lumps when my "customer service" sucks. But that House Sup is gonna need a favour from me some day and I can't wait.