Originally Posted by iriskkerry
Thanks for the warm reply. Everyone who knows my work ethics is shocked by what happened . Yes I have often thought of traveling, but, my first move is going to be to have this removed from my record. There is one law they cannot get around. It is discrimination, by that I mean you are not allowed to treat one employee differently than another. I know that acutes ordered 3 1/2 hours are run 3 hours by EVERYONE in the industry. Not everyone, everytime, but they are. It is more the rule than the exception. And, that is what I was instructed by my trainer!. They simply would not open those records or ASK the other nurses what they do. And the other point they fired me for??? BECAUSE THE NURSES ON THE FLOOR WHERE WE DO DIALYSIS DON'T LIKE ME????? I know the Human Resource manager at the hospital and will be filling her in on Monday. Perhaps this is not the first time they have encountered this difficulty with this nurse? So, I will be speaking with a lawyer first, to help me expedite getting this off my record.
Other than clearing my record my only hesitation with traveling at this juncture is won't 13 weeks take me al the way through Xmas? I might miss all 3 holidays with my family. I need to pull myself together and get something right away because I'm broke now. I mean, it's been 3 weeks.Agency work for awhile I guess. Thanks again.
I am so sorry this has happened to you! I'm just now getting caught up with this thread, I was going to warn you to resign before they could do just what they did... fire you. I saw where this was going (suspension without pay is a very, very bad sign) and your regional manager sounds like the superb---- I used to work for - you can't reason with a sociopath.
As for getting another job, I don't think you will have any problem. FMC will most likely not give a future employer anything but the dates of employment; BTW - never assume that HR works for
us (the employees)! Far from it, they are merely the enforcers, doing what your manager wants them to do. They are
not a resource or advocate for us (other than for benefits problems, etc.), at least not officially. It sounds like they were trying to warn you when they asked why you hadn't started to look for another job yet (they knew what was coming).
Also, I don't know if I would pursue the discrimination thing; I work in acutes (although for a hospital-owned unit) and have never heard of a rule that 3.5 hour tx's are routinely shortened to 3 hrs. Even when I did on call acutes for Gambro a few years ago I never heard that (OK, I didn't do that for long while I worked for Gambro).
We have an agreement -
in our written protocol, so we are covered - that we can shorten tx times by 10%
if necessary (e.g. pt problem, machine problem - NOT our convenience). For anything else, we have to contact the neph. (whose philosophy is as much tx time as possible - within reason, e.g. at the end of our shift they may
order a shorter tx).
Legally, I don't think you can get anywhere with informal agreements that are contrary to written orders. And don't expect anyone to back you up on this (they will deny they ever told you or are doing the same thing; never mind the tx records, nobody will bother to dig these up. And still, the doctors' orders - and your official, written protocols - are all that matters. I'm not trying to discourage you, but I'm afraid that's what you will hear from a lawyer.
Again, I don't think that this termination will be a problem for future employment (this kind of injustice has probably happened to most nurses - I was forced out of my very first job by an evil head nurse!). I think agency work is a great idea, especially at this time of the year when they really need the help.
Wishing you the best of luck, please keep us posted!
DeLana
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