Need advice

Nurses General Nursing

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I am a new nurse and I really enjoy my work. I just have one small problem that I'm hoping I can seek advice on. I'm at the point where I'm slowly starting to feel more comfortable at work and I feel myself really growing as a nurse. I often get gracious thanks from patients for all I do for them, and I often get compliments from the DONs. I work well with pretty much everyone except one charge nurse. I have nothing against her. I know she's a really good nurse and very smart. I just find that each and everytime I work with her, I find myself extremely stressed out and I often get behind in my work. It started even back when I was still on orientation with a preceptor. It's just that she's the kind of person who would make me do each and every little thing for my patients even if it's something a nursing assistant can do (and we do have nursing assistants). Like for instance, I'm running around checking up on my patients, assessing them, making sure they are comfortable and their questions answered to the best of my ability. Then I finally sit down to start my charting. Sometimes when I barely started charting, a patient may beep the desk asking to use the bedpan or something. The first person the charge nurse would tell to help the patient is me before she even tries to find the nursing assistant. So then my charting time gets interrupted to go do something a nursing assistant could do. Other charge nurses would first ask a nursing assistant and would only ask me to do something like empty a bedpan if they were all really busy with other patients. So because this charge nurse makes me run around to do all these small things for the patients, it takes time away from my charting and I get behind. Yet I get criticized when my charting is not complete by a certain time However if I'm charting and the charge nurse sees my patients have not recieved their baths or bed sheets changed, I'm the first person she goes to. It's not like I'm sitting around for nothing. I run around to provide the best care I can for the patients yet find time in between to do charting. I often go on my break late and come back earlier. I also often stay late to finish up my work yet I don't ask for overtime pay. And I find that almost all the days that I have to stay late to finish my work are days that I work with this charge nurse. Each time I come home feeling down. I don't know how it happens, but when I work with other charge nurses I can take a full patient load, give thorough care, and finish my work early enough to go home on time. Yet even when I have less patients when working with this charge nurse I still get behind. I was just wondering, will it be unprofessional of me if I were to go to one of the DONS and request to have my work days scheduled on days when this charge nurse does not work? Any advice would be appreciated.

Specializes in ER, ICU, Infusion, peds, informatics.

have you tried asking this charge nurse if she could check to see if one of the nas is available to handle the task?

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[color=#483d8b]she may feel that she is telling you that the task needs to be taken care of, not so much telling you that you need to do it. she may be leaving it up to you to delegate the task to others, and do it yourself if no one else is available.

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