Do you guys write ancedotals on each other?

Nurses General Nursing

Published

Specializes in NICU, PICU, PACU.

Our unit manager wants us to write ancedotals on each other is you find someone isn't consistently following protocols, shift charting, etc. I have bad feelings about this and feel it will get out of control. Also, after you write it you have the person sign it before management sees it . I sincerely hope that people will go to the person they feel has a problem and bring it up first and if it persists, then write it. These will be used for evaluations also.

What do you think?

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That is managements job! Talk about pitting staff against staff!! I routinely take people aside and say this or that happened. I would never assume the role of management and write someone up. I have only ever had to fill out 3 incident reports due to improper medications being hung, or when a new nurse decided to turn off renal dopamine or theophylline due to a level of 21 (he thought that was toxic) I told him the deal and said if he continues to do this kind of stuff he's going to find himself in real trouble. He wised up fast.

It is bad enough managers are looking over our backs to see how they can chip away at merit based raises. Get together with your colleagues and send a loud message to the suits that you work as a team and do not stab each other in the back!

And people wonder why I am fedup!!!!!

I believe there may even be labor laws governing if this is acceptable practice. If they force you to do it or be punished yourself, I'd call the National Labor Realtions Board and find out what the deal is. AT one point the suits were trying to have all staff nurses viewed as supervisors so we couldn't unionize. Supreme Court sided with us that time!

Good luck. Let us know what happens.

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turn the tables on them. Get together with the other staff and only write positive things about eachother, then turn those in.

Linda

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Wait a build solidarity on a unit! Like there isn't enough b*tching and backbiting already! We need to start acting like hall monitors with other nurses!

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Great suggestion Linda!! I am tempted to start writing ancedotals on my managers who sit on their butts and complain how busy THEY are. Hmmm..maybe I'm onto something.

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I agree with fedupnurse! Management is trying to get you to do their job! Why do you need them if you are going to be forced to do it for them and do you also get a portion of their paycheck?

All that is going to happen is they will tear apart morale by making you stab each other in the back! For me the best way to handle a problem is to go straight to the source be it another nurse, a tech whomever... I would go, (as a group) to the manager who dictated this and tell them you don't agree with this practice and give reasons. If that didn't do the trick I'd go above them.

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Originally posted by fedupnurse

AT one point the suits were trying to have all staff nurses viewed as supervisors so we couldn't unionize. Supreme Court sided with us that time!

Where did you get that idea? The Supreme Court, in National Labor Relations Board v. Kentucky River Community Care Inc., upheld a lower court ruling that staff nurses were supervisors and thus ineligible to join a union.

Is there a more recent case on point?

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The good ol' DIVIDE & CONQUER routine. Tell them to shove it.

Discipline is the managers job. How are you supposed to work together when you are all looking over your shoulder distrusting each other & morale sinks to the skids?

Besides that, part of the thing that makes someone a "supervisor" is the fact that they can discipline another worker. Your writing up another employee even with just an anecdotal note might be considered to be a disciplinary action. You might then be considered to have a supervisory role & therefore could not be a union. If the hospital fought for this in court & won, based on your ability to "discipline" another employee with an anecdotal, you could be prevented from ever unionizing & if you were already a union, you all could be removed from it.

The Courts decided that a particular group of nurses at a particular facility in Kentucky worked in a supervisory role based on their job description at that facility. It sided with that particular facility in that one case & would not allow those nurses to unionize. But it did not rule that all nurses are supervisors.

In fact, it ruled that every employer who seeks to stop its staff nurses from unionizing because it feels they are supervisors must each go thru the same court process, case by case, & PROVE that their nurses work in a supervisory role. Your having the ability to write each other up could make your hospitals case for them.

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Specializes in Critical Care.

Why not write up the managers for hiding in their offices on personal phone calls when all hell breaks loose, I personally would not write up another nurse, I would warn the nurse if I found something I think he/she could get in trouble for so they could correct the potential problem. I love the idea of writing up good deeds, we need more of this type of thinking.

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Specializes in Specializes in L/D, newborn, GYN, LTC, Dialysis.

I would refuse to participate. I would rather see a bulletin board with a different staff member's picture each month..... and all the neat things we did NOT know like:

she has a pilot's license and flies planes in her spare time.....

she volunteers as a little league/soccer/whatever coach....

he is room parent at his son's school....

she is an accomplished artist and shows and sells her work when off duty

she is writing children's books in her spare time...

He is an ordained minister at his local church....

he served 20 years in the army before going back to school to earn his BSN ....and so on....

all of the above are examples of things i know about coworkers, past and present, cause i BOTHERED TO FIND OUT and was INTERESTED!

How MUCH *POSITIVE* STUFF DO WE KNOW about EACH OTHER IN OUR OFF-NURSING TIME? Cause there is so much more to our sum total than what we do at work and everyone has an interesting "anecdotal" story to tell. Matter of fact, think I will suggest this at work. Have an employee each month featured! What fun facts we would see!

That is ALL the anectotal stuff I need or want to know about my coworker, and would go much further to building morale than the negative JUNK you describe above! sorry that makes me seethe!

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What is it about nurses, is it because the majority of us our women that we go out of our way to demean and critisize the very people we work with and need in crisis situations!

What happen to loyalty and proffessionalism?

If i see a charting error, maybe a forgotten med not given a behavior that needs to be addressed, you take them aside and approach them proffessionally !

I would never report a nurse, unless I see an error that would andanger a pts life.

Have we forgotten that we are human, and do not walk on water!

God bless all of us who get up everyday, or night and work 8 to 12 hours doing care, that most peolpe turn green thinking about!

We who put both our minds and backs into caring for people who will not remember our names, 24 hrs after discharge, but who will remember what kind of care we gave them everyday of their lives!

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Catlady,

what -jt said. Thanks -jt for putting it far more eloquently than I could have. I mainly got the idea from being a unionized nurse. Our hospital was trying something that would put us into a supervisory role. We fought it and won.

If I am ever told to write an acedotal it will be only all the positive things that nurse did all day. That should shut 'em up.

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