Is your facility warning staff for overtime, for missing lunch breaks or other?

On my floor, the last few months have seen a policy adopted where we need to clock our no later than 5 minutes after the scheduled end of our shift (7:30 am). If we clock out later than 7:35, we need to document the reason for our late clock-out in our time card edit book and the charge nurse from that shift needs to sign off on our excuse. If not, both the staff nurse and the charge are subject to counseling.

Further, we just received an e-mail that we need to take our lunch break. The e-mail talks about using our resources and asking for help (like we don't do that already??). We have also been told that if we are behind, do our nursing tasks & patient care and pass of "low priority" tasks like paperwork and PIV rotations or dressing changes to the day shift.

These policies have led to increased animosity between the day & night shift as well as an increase in paperwork delays and tardy completion of PIV rotations & dressing changes.

I know the policy is designed to decrease overtime payouts & lower costs while increasing staff efficiency, but it's not working well right now.

We cannot clock in early, it has to be at least 3min till the start of your shift. If you punch in earlier they will change it on your time card. I have come in on the weekends, 11a-11p, and when I get their the waiting room is full. I'm sorry but I'm not going to make my co-workers or my patients wait. I have to watch my check closely to make sure that they are not taking those extra few minutes away from me. They also do not like us to punch out "no lunch." Again if it's busy I'm not going to make my coworkers suffer so I can get some food. I'll grab some finger food and it's off to the races again.

We have the 6 mn rule, before and after. There are few times when I punch in earlier than that but I already know that they wouldn't pay for the extra minutes but I'd rather clock in and have that done that stand around and wait until it's exactly time.

The unit I work in has a time log that you put overtime, missed lunches, charge hours, etc. It is expected that you complete your work on time, and anything in the book has to be initialed by management to be approved. If we do have overtime, it is supposed to be "clearly obvious" why we had to stay over (late admission, crititcal pt.). A few nurses I know regularly don't take lunch and stay over to chart or whatever. Management hasn't said anything yet, but I think it's coming.

We can punch in 12 min prior to our shift, but we don't get paid for it. And if we punch out late and do not document in the log, we don't get paid. However, if you punch out even 10 sec. early, you get docked!

Yes, we're under pressure for no overtime, to always punch out for lunches -and have all lunched finished prior to 5 hours into the shift; missing punches is a write-up. It would seem the lowest priority is patient care... at least the non-critical patient care.

Leave stuff for the next shift? You can likely expect the same to happen to you if this occurs. Unless it is, obviously, a VERY late admit and you don't finish, you're "not using time management."

I usually punch out for lunch, keep working if no one notices, skip breaks and work like a manic fiend. When, on the RARE occasion, there is a lull in the action and I've made rounds, etc., I kick back in the nursing station and woe be it to the one that gives me crap about it!

I got talked to once because I would almost fill out the time exemption log because I wouldn't be able to take a break and it just so happened to occur most of the time I worked. I told them as long as they keep short staffing our unit and making me care for four unstable patients (I was on ICU stepdown), they could pay me for my break. All we ever heard was "we need to keep the budget under control".

yep, administrator presenting himself and stated I needed to start taking my lunch breaks because it made the facility look bad in the eyes of the state that I wasn't allowed one. HA! I didn't have time and told him so. He stated that with two nurses working (120 residents) there should be plenty of time. Yeah, right loser...

Soon after a group of us nurses went to speak to the DON and the company straightened it out so that we didn't have to clock out for lunch anymore. We still weren't paid for a half an hour, so we still lost out. Wish that administrator could have spent just a day with me on the floor and see when we had time to eat.

Long time, no time. working 24/7.Missed you!!! Read some postings as a guest.

Yes..to everything. Do this, go here, do that, be quicker, threats to address problems of staff members poor time management. "What do you mean you didn't have a break..lets talk about it.." "Why do you spend so much time with families?" "You let that family manipulate you, its your responsibility to control your patients and familie..." "be more compassionate..take time to communicate with your patients" "We provide a service, and we must always think in terms of providing excellent care"
We have a policy of scripting, you must.."and then we are "educated" on how to introduce ourselves to our clients. When finished providing our "service" we are encouraged to ask the patient or who ever if there is anything else we can do and we hope we provided excellent service....

I wanted to resign Saturday, June 7!! I am over all of this b...s...! I have had it. Considering how much I Love my ICU, my "people" representing every aspect of a large hospital, I feel as if we are simply cogs in the wheels of a large health care facility. We are not people, we are tools. It is amazing how those who don't work in the trenches, so to speak, have no idea what it is we, the people, actually do.

Hour long staff meetings where no one wants to say anything since this inevitably leads to another 30 minute lecture. Then some wonder why we are behind. Physicians who can't find and RN because we are sitting somewhere, often times like dummies, glassy eyed, mind numbed, wondering when this unscheduled staff meeting will ever end. Lately I just walk away, I have stopped caring, not about my people or my patients and families..oh no...

We recently completed some sort of survey to find out how we feel about, well, just about everything. Last years was a nightmare..asking the same questions over and over again, sometimes the same questions, just written in different ways, over and over and over.

AND THIS WAS MANDATORY. And this is abuse!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is the first time ever in my professional life I replied in the negative to nearly every question, or just mildly negative. My colleagues state that they did the same thing. Last years insulting survey contributed to these responses.

One more Magnet Star reference and I will detonate.
I sing a little song. It is generally greeted with laughter

I'm a Magnet Star, I'm a Magnet Star
No matter where you are
no need to travel far
'cause now we're all Magnet Stars

How old are we????

I am in crisis. personally and professionally. I just want to be the nurse that I am and that has worked exceedingly well for me over the last 28 years. I am in no need of a novice administrator telling me how to be a member of the latest fad in nursing. I AM NOT A MAGNET STAR..I AM AN INDIVIDUAL, I AM A PERSON, ABOVE ALL I AM A NURSE!!

I will miss morning break and lunch if it is indicated. I will continue to be available to my patients and families 24/7 while they are still in my unit. I will continue to buy food for them and give them my dvd player and movies. If I want to go to a patient's funeral, I will do so. No one can tell me how to be compassionate. I am a seething cauldron of emotion and love trying to understand and feel the pain and fear my patients feel.

I cried all day yesterday because of the death of two patients and the expected death of a third. two were mine. Their family's were mine, their pain was mine and their loss was mine. No one can tell me how to do anything different. Yes, they all have my cell phone number and I do speak with who ever calls me. I am crying now as I write this

As I have written here in this forum before.. I am what I do, I do what I am. When those who want to improve the quality of care of our patients and by extension their familys understand what I do, accept it, perhaps embrace it, then I will accept advice from my "betters".

I don't need to do any overtime. I refuse. We were informed that once we clock out, we need to, as quickly as possible, leave the floor. Get out and Get off. Do not pass GO and God forbid you forget something and have to come back, you'll be questioned.

Lately no one is observing this. We all just seem to hang out and speak with our friends/colleagues.
We wear uniforms/scrubs of our choice now..clean and neat, shoes clean. Heck..maybe I'll buy a teletubby color scrub.
Passive resistance has grown. Discontent and anger hum softly just beneath the surface.
Bad things were done to two excellent staff members who had the misfortune of getting sick.

What is happening?

I feel like the bewildered characters in the strange movie Pleasantville, as change occurs, not necessarily bad, but in such a way that the affected black and while characters could not adjust to the speed of the change.

I fall asleep driving home from work, oncoming headlights seen through my closed eyelids are the only indication that I have fallen asleep driving.
I once woke up asleep in my truck in my driveway after work and had no memory of driving home. I pull over to the side of the road and take a catnap just long enough to get me home without causing an accident.
I am exhausted and yet can't seem to get to bed before 2 a.m every night. Here I am at the barn writing this and its very late, 0110 hrs. I still have to drive home, but I am wide awake at this time.

So..what to do...

I'm gonna do what I always do..take care of those that God chooses to put in my hands and just do the best that I can do.

Fads rise and fade then go away. Some come back another day.

I've started provigil.

Eeka End Game, RN

P.S Hey, won nurses week 2008 exemplar contest. Submitted two. Won't go to Utah this October (prize). I don't travel well. Not that far for two days. My horses will miss me.

P.P.S Got a baby bull calf..so cool!! Hes really little. Never had a bovine before.

Not everything is bad.

Just to let you know that I fear returning to work Thursday. I'm sweating thinking about this. I've already begun anticipating all the weird stuff that has been happening lately in our unit. On my days off, from the hospital that is, I'm spending half the day in bed after I have woken up, praying that this day does not pass so quickly as it seemed to do the day before. These are the days I have ear marked for the farm. I've been late to work several times this current and pass month. Waiting for a memo.

Lately (the last few months) I hide in my patients rooms and hang out with the family/friends. I only go out to help another colleague and flee from any approaching "boss". All of our unit beds are in private, enclosed glass rooms, some have one wall. You could say that this over supervision has improved the quality of care in that it is more desirable to hide in our rooms then to be found in the nursing station and have it implied that we are not doing anything. Having computers in the rooms has facilitated our hiding as we can get a lot done while avoiding detection.
Cat and Mouse..who wins? who is the cat? who is the mouse. It seems to shift back and forth in this passive aggressive game of Us and Them.

Its now 0313 hrs on Wednesday morning. I'm sitting here at the computer having a majory anxiety attack about Thursday.

Wish me luck!! Hope some hospital administrators are actually reading these posts, it actually would be a good idea if some of them would join allnurses.com. I told all of my people, including "chiefs" about this forum, even gave my "name" that I write under. Perhaps I'll here from one of them.

Gotta dry off, still sweating thinking about tomorrow.

End Game RN

Reading these posts makes cherish the hospital I work for, absolutely cherish it. Wow, I can't imagine putting up with being treated like crap like that.