I work for a small hospital in Indiana. Besides our regular nursing duties of caring for our patients we have "extra" stuff we are suppose to do. Such as check the extra oxygen tanks to be sure they are full (daily), check the crash cart for outdates (monthly), clean the med room fridge (monthly) and so on and so on. Also, on admission if anyone shows S/S of infection we are suppose to fill out a paper for the IC nurse. We are a med/surg floor and almost all of our medical patients will show signs of infection. (DUH!!). We also have a fall risk paper we are suppose to fill out on each person who is admitted. Some of the questions on there are about gait and changes in gait that are more geared for a PT person to determine than a nurse. Oh yeah, our department is responsible for shredding our own paper (the confidential stuff with patients names and etc). I keep telling the DON and my patient care manager that if I didn't have all these other non-nursing duties maybe I could actually do some bedside nursing. What a novel idea! Of course most of these duties are ignored when the census and/or acuity is high. My patients come first. I think the only "cleaning" duties we should have should be keeping our report room fridge clean and tidying up our break room. Heck, I am no Martha Stewart at home much less at work.
Thanks for letting me vent.