Does it bother you when CEOs etc. get "excellence in care giving" awards?

Nurses General Nursing

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The more this happens, the more it ticks me off. Which it shouldn't, since there's no way I can change anything about it...but I've never been able to fully embrace the serenity prayer. :D

As upper management personnel in our system and others in the area receive award after award for their "excellence in care giving" or "excellence in management" and other such tripe, I am getting more and more jaded. Especially about the care giving one...I don't even remember the last time our CEO walked the halls of a hospital, much less actually delivered care (probably never, since only one of our upper upper management people was ever a nurse; the rest have business degrees.) I also know that morale is getting lower and lower at most facilities in the area as they continue to cut benefits to "regular" employees. It just irritates me to read all of these glowing accounts of how wonderful these people are and how much they benefit patients when the reality of the situation is probably that they know the right people in the right places.

Anyone else feel this way, or am I just getting burnt out on the lack of relationship between upper management and us peons?

never met a CEO who knew the first thing about patient care but could sure cut the budget for overtime and staff when it might put their bonus in question.

Specializes in M/S, Travel Nursing, Pulmonary.

I wouldnt read too much into the rewards administration likes to give themselves either. Thats what they do. I think on some level the even now how absurd half the rewards are, they just like the excuse to have a little ceremony.

Case in point:

When I was a travel nurse, I had an assignment in a place that was trying to convert from LTC to ALTC. A mojor hospital had bought the place while it was a nursing home and wanted to turn it into a place it could send its acute patients that just needed some more time. Every time this place made any change to the routine of care being given, the administration would throw a party for itself and congradulate itself for "another step taken towards completeing the mission of transforming the care of our facility". I'm not kidding when I say.........sometimes there was a banquet over something as trivial as a manager decideing their unit would change where the syringes were stored or the documentation specialist would (for the fifth time in less than a year) give a presentation on the importance of documentation, but with a different slide show this time.

At first I gave them the benefit of the doubt. They were really trying to change the culture of the place. I'll never forget my first week on the unit I was assigned to. Some of the nurses still there from the places nursing home days noticed I carried a stethescope with me. The reacted with:

"You dont need that. Your just showing off. Only doctors need their own personal steth. like that. What are you going to do with it anyway, listen to ALL your patients hearts or something?".

So that should give you an idea of the culture that existed there that this admin. was dealing with. But after a few weeks, I noticed the banquets became more and more frequent and the events that prompted these award cerimonies became more and more trivial. Meanwhile, the problems that plagued the nursing home from before for the most part remained. A great many staff were in the habit of taking 2hr lunch breaks, call offs were a chronic issue, equipment for caring for the more acute patient was still not available, the call bell system was malfunctioning more often than not, it took charge nurses close to 2 hours to create an assignment everyone would accept (because more than a few nurses had gotten in the habit of refuseing assignments, calling them unfair, and it was never quiet right for everyone) and close to half the nurses passed meds without any documentation of doing so what so ever. Yep, you read it right........see, the system for med pass here was to grab all the pills out of the pt. drawer that pharmacy delivered and hand them to the pt...........without even looking at what you were giving. The defense for such a med pass system was "Well, its pharmacy's fault if something goes wrong". :smackingf

These problems persisted and survived regardless of what interventions the managers and admin. tried. Now, I dont know about you, but if I had things like this going on in a facility I ran, award banquets would NOT be on the menu. Yet, like I said, the little ceremonies continued. Someone would change the color coding of the pt. arm bands...............award. On and on.

So, in the end, I guess what I am saying is, administration gives themselves rewards regardless of what is going on with the facility. They dont mean anything. Its just an excuse to let the facility pay for lunch for the day.

Specializes in Management, Emergency, Psych, Med Surg.

No, it does not bother me at my facility because our CEO is WONDERFUL and he always gives the staff credit for any positive thing that happens. He is a great guy. He has been in his position for about two years. Before him, the hospital was in the toilet and had a terrible reputation. But he has changed all that. Our hospital is a small, county supported public hospital. It has made no money in the past 15 years. Last year we made 5 million bucks. But is our CEO standing still---- no way. We have gotten a new medication dispensing system and we are getting all new stretchers next month. He has not cut any staff and our staffing standard (34 bed med surg floor) went from a ratio of 6-7 to 1 down to 4 to 1 and an occasional 5 to one. He is wonderful. We have gotten lots of awards since he has been at our hospital and he always gives us credit. We just love him. He knows almost every employee by name. He does these meetings with the staff 4 times a year and it is always a theme. This year will be tropical and I guarantee he will show up in a Hawiian shirt and a grass skirt over his slacks. He puts out a monthly news letter keeping us up to date on what is going on in the hospital and discussing changes that are coming and things that we can all do to make our work environment better. Our patient satisfaction scores are off the roof. We are seeing more patients than ever because we have improved out service so much. I love my job there and cannot think of anywhere else that I would rather work.

Specializes in tele, oncology.

Eriksoln, these awards are from outside agencies, not internal. It really makes me wonder what paperwork got skewed where and how for the awards to be given to these people.

Diane, if I worked at a place like that, I'd totally understand. Unfortunately I'm just among a lot of little fish in a sea with a few barracudas. Honestly, I've never even met most of our upper management, despite years of working for the same system. They certainly don't know my name!

We did have someone in upper management a few years ago (I'll call her Jane) who I thought was great, but those above her thought that she cared too much for the employees and not enough about the bottom line. She would actually round on both shifts about every other month or so just to see how things were going on the floors. She would do things like mail handwritten cards to your home that read along the lines of "Mr. Jones from room 200 said you took wonderful care of him during his stay. It's people like you who help make our hospital a success! Keep up the great work and a big thank you from me! Have a great day, Jane". When she got awards, I never minded, b/c I felt like she honestly believed that we were all in it together, and she acknowledged the contributions that we all made.

Specializes in M/S, Travel Nursing, Pulmonary.
Eriksoln, these awards are from outside agencies, not internal. It really makes me wonder what paperwork got skewed where and how for the awards to be given to these people.

Diane, if I worked at a place like that, I'd totally understand. Unfortunately I'm just among a lot of little fish in a sea with a few barracudas. Honestly, I've never even met most of our upper management, despite years of working for the same system. They certainly don't know my name!

We did have someone in upper management a few years ago (I'll call her Jane) who I thought was great, but those above her thought that she cared too much for the employees and not enough about the bottom line. She would actually round on both shifts about every other month or so just to see how things were going on the floors. She would do things like mail handwritten cards to your home that read along the lines of "Mr. Jones from room 200 said you took wonderful care of him during his stay. It's people like you who help make our hospital a success! Keep up the great work and a big thank you from me! Have a great day, Jane". When she got awards, I never minded, b/c I felt like she honestly believed that we were all in it together, and she acknowledged the contributions that we all made.

There are both. A great many awards are internal. But, I admit, I dont know of any agencies that go around giving out rewards to hospitals for...........well, whatever. Even if I had known, I think you can understand why I assumed the banquets were an internal thing. Like you said, unless the paperwork was very skewed, who was looking at this place and saying they deserved any rewards?

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