I was the only RN on my floor named in the Press Ganey for the Month of MAY

Nurses General Nursing

Published

Specializes in CTICU, Interventional Cardiology, CCU.

Ok SOOO....as some of you know I love to write when I post.

So a few days ago, my girlfriends and I were leaving after what was probably one of the funniest nights I EVER had at the hosp, (the hosp which I usually hate, and will explain the funny night later in this post). My one girlfriend says, "hey let's check the bulliten board on the 2nd floor to see who was in the Press Ganey Scores." I said, "I just want to go the **** home I am tired." Both of my girlfriends grab my arm, and force me over to the board. :no:

It's this big elaborate bulliten board for all the people to see, lots of flashy decos and pics. Our hosp. is all about the "Strive for 5" thing right now and the Press Ganey recog. and awards. All the RN's have this pin on our badges that looks like a superman logo but it says "5" insted of "S" for superman..yea gotta love big hosp. and the crap they come up with.

But the Press Ganey is something we take seriously as RN's and it just so happens to be on the 'Strive for 5' board. So we look at the names, it spans from Jan-May. May was just updated the night before, eventhough it was june 5th. My girlfriend kicks me in the butt and says, "ANG---ISN't that your name?! (so lound every pt. and hosp. employee walking by looked at me, it was about 8:45am)" I look, it was the VERY last name on the list for the month of May:eek:. I said, "UMM lemme see..although they spelled it wrong I am pretty sure it's my name...Angeline Morett, RN (totally wrong spelling of my name)...do you think there are any other RN's that work at this place with that name???" as I pulled my Badge ID with the right spelling of my name above the posting,(my badge) Angelina Moretti, RN over the misspelled version of my name, Angeline Morett, RN. and we started laughing.....:clown:

So as I am thinking about this on the way home, I wanted to make sure it was legit, that I got the Press Ganey Score for my floor for the month of May. I log onto the employee website, check the Emploe Recog. Awards and low and behold I did get the Award. I have to tell the story about the week I had leading up to my girlfriend pointing this Press Ganey thing out to me.

So I start my week, only to find out someone in stafing screwed up my schedule and had me working a day that I was susposed to be off. The hosp. only called my cell phone to tell me this, although they had my HOME phone # and didn;t even call it. My cell is a PA # and my home is a NYC# but i work in NJ. Both of my #'s are on the employee phone list. I was within minuites of getting ready to go out when I said let me check my cell messages, I haven't checked it since yesterday. I check my messages, only to have multiple rude messages from the Day shift Charge Nurse, asking why I wasn't at work at 7:30PM for my shift. It's about 8:40pm at this point when I checked my messages. I FREAK OUT!!!! I called work, my girlfriend who was NOC shift charge nurse, said,"don't freak, we have been having problems all week with the schedule, just let me call the NOC Nursing supervisor and call you back." She calls back, and they want me to come in. I live about 45min. from the hosp. and made it there in 25min and had to leave my finace(who I live with) and friends who were waiting for me with this crap excuse, what made it worse is I haven't seen these friends since college about 6 years ago.:sniff:

I get there, I find out I am being puled to another tele floor, fine with me, I see the NOC Nursing director, he says he will pay me for the full 12 hours, and that he knew something was wrong when I didn't show up for work b/c it's not like me. He knows what happened with the schedule, and he was sorry. I said no prob. I go to the floor have a great night with awesome RN's that I made friends with and actually enjoyed my night, eventhough I didn;t get to see my college friends, but sometimes life interferes.

So this is the kicker, 2 weeks ago I got a verbal warning for having 3 sick days, not sick time but actual DAYS, like 1,2,3, days.. in the last 6 months. One of which was a scheduling mistake(not the scheduling mistake that happened the other night but back in March 08), and what happened was the staffing office had me working while I was on vacation, a vacation which my Floor Director Approved AND signed off on and I kept the papers to prove it. :crash_com

So My night shift nursing manager showed me the paper work for the verbal warning, I reminded her that one of the 3 days was a scheduling mistake, and that I would refuse to sign it. She agreed with me, and told me to refuse to sign it. I also said, "Umm verbal warning,from what I know that means VERBAL WARNING, and that involves the floor director actually talking to me and not sending messages through you to tell me." My NOC Shift nursing manager agrees with me.:selfbonk:

So, it gets better, I see my director of my floor, which is once in a very very blue moon, she dosen't say a word to me about the verbal warning, and she has the nerve to say not once but multiple times," Ang, you are too nice to your pt's." UMMMM..HUH? WHAT the ****, did I miss staff meeting that said we have to be miserable robots, and just GET THROUGH OUR SHIFT WITHOUT showing CARE and COMPASSION? Or maybe some of us actually show our pt's that WE CARE about them, hence the reason I became an RN.., explain to me how being positive and having a smile on my face is being too nice, and is that printed anywhere in the employee handbook, that we can't show kindness, care, compassion and positive projected attitude toward the pt's? Sometimes it's just a smile or a simple gestue that makes the pt. feel HUMAN....and I have come to the conclusion that from my PROFESSIONAL RN mannerism, as a caring and compassionate RN has also made me "flakey" to said people. If anything, if me or my family were a pt. I WOULD HOPE AND PRAY THAT THE RN HAD A POSITIVE ATTITUDE AND SMILE ON THEIR FACE, espically NIGHT SHIFT NURSES and Day shift Nurses too, and the RN took the 30 seconds to TALK to me. And I come from a family of Nurses. I educate my pt's ALOT, and try to keep the medical jargon at a mininum, b/c most people don't understand medical jargon. I relate to the pt. and thrie interests. If that makes me a "flake" to some PEOPLE then, they are missing out on my excellent nursing ability.:argue:

Here's one example of me being treated like the floor "flake", For Nurses week all the RN's on my floor got engraved watches, which I had just found out last week b/c I said to my girlfriend "nice watch where did u get that" SHE SAYS,"you didn't get one?", umm nurses week was a few weeks ago???? And where was my watch I got a crappy hat that all of us got, but no watch?? I ask my NOC manager, I get this response, "OH Ang you didn't get yours??" as I see the list of all 50 RN's with 49 names checked off as to recieved the watches except my name. My NOC looks in the box and the only ones left are the generic ones. She said, "Well that's ******, where is your watch?" I didn;t care at this point b/c this crap always happens to me and only me on my floor. I laugh. B/C I knew the powers that be don't like me, the powers that be don't even know me.:sasq:

So anyway, back to the last night I was at work. I helped out the new 11p-7a CNA on my floor, she was clueless, and had alot of work with no help in sight. It was her first night on her own, she's BRAND NEW. I said helped her with what ever she needed. She is in nursing school, and I even said I would help her studying, she said to me, "Ang you are one of the most intelligent RN's I know, you know cardiac like the back of your hand, and you know more than any one of my teachers in different areas of nursing..how do you know all of this". I said, "I had a good teacher, My Aunt, who is a ER nurse and my hero!" Ok...

Soooo...after a long hilarious night of eating candy from trinidad and me almost cracking my teeth on them b/c I am as White as they come, Italian-Irish German, pale face, looking like I could blend into the walls of the hosp at any moment,b/c I am so **** pale, and here I am recieving cultural tips from my Fillipino, Indian from India ,and West Indies nurses...that love me to death, and They always make me eat things they bring into work. And they know I LOVE FOOD...

And after us NOC shift RN's worked as a team, which is rare, I was beat. I am standing at the nurses station ready to go home and look at my girlfriend and she has this look on her face. She said, "Ang, I just had to look at the cardiac monitors, I don't know why, we are done our shift, but I had to and see that my pt. wasn't monitored. I checked the pt., but only the wires for the monitor were hanging out of the gown. I checked the room and can't find the damn tele pack." I looked at her with this blank face, my back pack on, keys in hand and ready to split, and saw she was so upset by this, now my girlfriend has been a nurse for years, and is one of my best friends on my floor, and kind of made me into the RN I am today. I said, "You want me to help you find it?", she shook her head yes. When you loose a tele pack on my floor you get writen up b/c each tele pack is about $3000 a piece and we have 30+ tele packs on my floor, I couldn;t let this happen to one of my best friends.

I said, "I was in that pt. room with the new CNA, as she was changing the linnens...God I HOPE IT ISN'T IN THE DIRTY UTILITY ROOMM!!!!!":barf01::barf01:

I said I have an idea and begin lauging out of controll. We get these bio-suits that have been on our unit for years (every unit has them), and we have a ton of them like 200+, never been used, untill now!!! We suit up, bio-suits you zip into, the duck bill N-95 masks with the fashionable orange duck bill accent, triple glove, look like a nuclear Donald Duck cartoon, and head into the dirty utility room. :grn:

I told my GF, "YOU OWE ME A BEER", she said she owed me a lot more than that. We go through the bags of NASTY, AWFUL, thank god we had the n-95 masks on, rancid linen. :beercuphe

It went like this, "Oh wait this bag is all ****, this bag is all ****, let's look in this bag". As I was almost ready to vomit:barf01:, I pulled out a bunch of sheets from a bag, and TAHDAHHHHHH there was the ******* heart monitor. My girlfriend started yelling like she won the mega millions powerball.. She ran out of the dirty utility room, monitor in hand yelling "WEEE GOTTTT ITTT!!!":lghmky:, wearing the blue bio-suit and the duck bill N-95 mask. Looking what I thought was a over sized smurf-donald duck nuclear hybird. I was laughing so hard I had a ****** asthma attack. And all of the Day shift RN's looked at us like we needed a 72hour phych hold. My girlfriend and I were giving eachother high fives, and cheering in the blue bio suites and orange N-95 masks, as I am trying to suck on my inhaler as one of my friends is trying to hold MY xopenex MDI in the spacer and every inhilation I took sounded like a duck to be totally ironic.

The NOC shift manager was still there, and she said that it was probably one of the funniest things she has seen in years. I was trying to get some one to take a pic. with their camera phone, and even tried to get one of the day shift RN's to get my phone, which was in my pocket in my scrubbs under the bio-suit which you had to unzipp. She said she wouldn;t touch me with a 10 foot pole and an AJAX bath.

So we got the tele pack, got out of the ridiclous bio-suits, bathed in chlorhexidine scrub, and germ-a-cide wipes, and began to make our way out of the hosp. :bdyhdclp:

This is where I see the Press Ganey Scores. And this is where the beginning of my post fits in.

I just wanted to go home, it was 845am, we just worked 13-14 hours, and my sidekick wants to look at the ***** 'Strive for 5' billboard. I said" I better get a dam reward for that clown show we just put on, finding the heart monitor and looking like psychotic smurfs on LSD" This is when I said "I just want to go the ***** home, I am tired."

But as we look, and my girlfriend kicks me in the butt and points out my name, and I see my name, I LAUGH, b/c I thought about what just happened 15 min. ago on our floor in the dirty utility room.:nurse:

I also think, "Humm why wasn't I told about this?", and I also think, It must put a thorn in a certain persons side seeing me named as the Press Ganey RN for the month of May for my floor, maybe that's why I wasn't told.:angryfire

Unlike the watch for nurses week, they couldn't hide this from me. My name is there for all the hosp. and pt's to see, in BOLD. Although it was spelled wrong, but it was still my name. And when I went home and checked it on the Employee web site, and saw it in BOLD under my NAME spelled the right way, I felt like putting that BIO-SUIT and the duck bill N-95 mask back on, minus the urine and fecal matter, and yelling..."I AM A GOOD NURSE, I don't need a stinkin' watch to tell me that, I got something even better, PATIENTS, who are human beings, who noticed that my smile, care and compassion made an impact on their life and took the time to tell the hosp. what a great RN I AM":rckn:

Just wanted to share my excitement!!!

We Don"t Need No Stinkin Badges! I Mean Watches !!!

Congratulations on your accomplishment ! :yeah::yeah::yeah:

Make em fix the spelling of your name!!

Specializes in ER, ICU, Med-Surg.

I loved your story, you sound like a very fun co-worker :) Congratulations!

Specializes in LTC.

Are you trying to tell me that it's not normal for the day shifters to look at the night shifters like we need a bed up in psych?

Congrats

Congratulations !

:nurse:

You obviously have the true spirit of nursing in your heart and soul. You can laugh at the absurdities of things that don't matter and you understand the things that do matter. The proof is in the recognition by your patients...........who know and appreciate a real nurse when they see one.

Good for you. Keep the light shining. Florence would be proud!

COngrats thats awesome !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Angela :yeah::D

Great story Angie....

Specializes in Neuro.

Way to show the powers that be!! I love the fact that those in charge think they are so high and mighty and we are the lowly ones who don't have the right to have fun, but it "all comes out in the wash!!" Unless you go through the linens first!!! :chuckleAnyway, way to go. You sound like a very good nurse who knows that compassion is always needed in this field.

Thank you for sharing your story....It was great! :yeah:

Congrats!! You should be so proud of yourself. I hate PG but I'm happy for you. wink I can see why your patients adore you. You sound like a fun and caring person as well as being a wonderful nurse. I hope you get a copy so you can have one for yourself.

I also think it's disgusting you didn't get an engraved watch like the others. I would make it a point to get one on principle alone. You need to set boundaries as to what is acceptable and what isn't and this isn't. You deserve better.

Specializes in CTICU, Interventional Cardiology, CCU.

hey all thanks so much and I apologize if I offeneded anyone with my profanity use. But reguardless it has put a spring in my step as a nurse!!

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