"Fired for NO Reason"

llg, you make excellent points. I think many of us will sympathize with someone who has been fired because many of us tend to root for the underdog. We also know that there are some dysfunctional workplaces out there inhabited by toxic personalities. Some of us has been recipients of unfair treatment in life, so we do know it happens.

As a traveler, I walk into some of the most dysfuntional places. I scares me sometimes when I see how low these places go with the venomous attitudes. While there for 13 weeks, I pay attention to what I think got them there so I know what to avoid when I go staff.

Ruby, I just want to say that I agree with every point that you have made. We feel sympathetic to the person who was fired and for the most part, we only ever hear their side of the story. Not managment's. Well, we have management's side of the story in regards to Sal being fired. Personally, management needs to do something when patient safety and care is compromised and if it's by firing a nurse who has poor performance despite re-education then so be it.

I think both sides are talking about the extremes and people who dont fall into these extremes are taking it.......differently than we hope. At least thats the case with my post.

I dont think anyone out there believes EVERYONE who is fired is just being picked on. Heck, there is another post out there right now about people doing school work while on the clock and falling behind. That is no acceptable on any level, in any profession.

I dont think, on the other hand, that anyone believes that EVERYONE who is fired deserves it. We have all seen/heard of the units filled with low moral nurses (new and experienced alike) who have no other way to keep themselves from taking a leap off the bridge than to push someone else towards it.

I have seen my share of hopeless GNs. There are a few who, obviously, got their impression of nursing from sitcoms (ER, House, Grey's Anatomy) that lead people to believe we work in ideal conditions and argue about moral issues all day. When they find out nursing is difficult work and often hard for non-glamorous reasons, they lose their desire to be in the field and hang around until they figure out where to go.

The reason I speak up about the orientation process that is failing is because, I think more than a few new nurses who dont fall into the "hopeless" category fail, despite a good attitude and a genuine desire to do well.

The gap between where schools stop and where the hospital orientation picks up is HUGE. It takes an exceptional person to bridge that gap. Having an exceptional preceptor will make going from A to B so much more possible. For some reason though, a lot of hospitals just throw the preceptor responsibility at whoever is most convenient at the time. Some people are meant to do it, some are not. I think picking who does this service more carefully would go a long way towards getting better results with retention.

Just a disclaimer here so my point is not lost on defensiveness again. This is not saying I think OP was not the right person for the job. Her case was, from what I see, a case of the GN being hopeless. But, gee, we have to do better somehow. Not that I have an answer for that.

Hehe As a student I did a 4 week rotation in a peds clinic so even as I was writing that I took pause. I thought about it and was too lazy to go back and change it and I hadn't even saved it yet But it also generates good discussion as to where this kind of nurse could work. And is she really unteachable? Isn't everyone teachable on some level? Or do we really have to throw in the towel on her completely? Maybe she just needs an extra long orientation on her next job.

I am curious to know where this nurse ended up, what kind of job did she find. And I wonder what kind of advice was given to her when she got the boot, such as ICU really isn't for you. Perhaps you would be better in such-and-such.

I think too we are so quick to jump on people about not knowing better.

Take the INR and coumadin incident for one. I wonder if anyone pulled her aside to see if it wasnt a problem with how she looked up the info, if she had attempted to do things right and something else happened other than just assumeing she was stupid and didnt know it was not proper to give the med.

Let me explain a med. error that I've seen that shows what I mean:

At my first hospital, we were computerized. You could pull up all your pt. into onto the screen. Vitals, labs, history, allergys, pending orders, new orders.........everything.

More than once, someone new to the hospital system would come in and make an error that was becoming much too common.

See, the info. always posted with newest info. on the left........older info trailing off to the right. Except for vitals info...........it went the other direction. So, on a couple occasions, a nurse would make decisons based on very old data because they were in a hurry and looked at the left most info. A couple times doctors got called about abnormal BPs or HRs and then the error was pointed out to the nurse. No big deal, just learn to look at the date of the data is all they had to learn. Then, a student nurse with a fill in clinical instructor (the usuall instructor on the floor didnt make it in due to weather I believe) gave a BP med. to someone with a BP of.....oh, something like 101/60. Problem was, they read the info. on the left as being most recent, and thought the BP was high. After that, the hospital fixed the problem.

The error with the coumadin was so...........just.........not acceptable, I find it hard to believe she didnt know better. My first impression is that something happened. Something that didnt come out. Maybe even, after being called into the office and told "YOU SUCK" by everyone, she was rushing to keep up and didnt even look. Thats a whole other problem, refer to my first post in this thread for my reaction to that.

As the op stated, the coumadin/inr thing was just one incident among many for this nurse.

In my experience, these type of nurses go into mgmt.

I guess I cant wrap my brain around that. I am not afraid to say it out in the open........when I was a GN coming right out of school.........I was convinced I was.......ah, remedial. Not bad for "showing up late, not helping, leaving the unit" type reasons, but not the smartest out of my class by a long shot. And, for lack of a better way to put it........even I would not have done that.

So, I just rack my brain for other reasons that it happened............like the one I described above.

IDK. Coming out of school I saw people going str8 into ICU and such. My instructors who were looking out for me told me to go into a small hospital M/S setting and build up confidence and skills. I'm glad I did that. Maybe Sal needs it too.