Professionalism question? Please give me your opinion.

[Chantilly]

As part of my requirements for my last semester of my ADN program we have to do a leadership project. I was recruited by the faculty advisor organize a health fair for the faculty of our school. Myself and two other students are working on this project. As part of the project we have to get in touch with the local hospitals and try to get them to donate the items we need. Well here is where my issue begins...

I was asked to join this project because two of the students that were in the project before me were not meeting the expectations of the project advisor, and they did not show any intention of changing their behavior. One of these students was supposed to contact a local hospital getting supplies donated, the student was specifically asked to arrange a face to face meeting and did not do this. Instead the correspondence took place through fax and email, and the hospital donated things that we did not need. So this is where I come in, I was asked to call this hospital and contact the Director of Nursing. I did do this, but she will not return my phone calls. I am worried that the student before me killed the chances of getting this hospital on board for our project. I only need 15 minutes of the DON's time, to explain what we are doing and see if the hospital is interested in helping us out.

To make a very long story short, I was wondering if it would be unprofessional and reflect poorly upon the school if my project group were to just go to the hospital and try to talk to the DON without having scheduled an appointment with her. I really don't want to bring negative attention to the school, let alone myself since this hospital is a prospective employer. So what do you guys think?

[VenaKavaRN]

I think going to see the DON would probably be a bad idea. Not only is it unprofessional, but she may be out in meetings all day and you won't get to see her anyway. It's my experience that the higher up in the org somebody is, the less they are in their office You don't want to be waiting all day in that office to speak to her.

I don't know if this is the best option, but here's what I would do:

Document all of your contacts with the DON. Record the dates and times of your phone calls, but it would be even better to email her and then print those emails out. Fax would also work. Make sure you are being very professional and businesslike in these emails, don't be above schmoozing a little bit ("We want to do this for YOUR *wonderful* facility" blah blah like that), grammar and spelling, all that. Maybe give it a couple more days with ONE contact per day.

Then, take all of this documentation to your instructor and explain your problem. In my experience, the more the instructor knows about what's going on, the better. And get to her as soon as possible, don't do this the day before you're supposed to be having the fair. See what she says. Maybe she can give you some pointers on dealing with this DON professionally, since, odds are, she's dealt with this person before for previous events.

Hope that helps, I think your instructor will be understanding if you have the proof that you're putting the effort into getting in touch with this person.

[Jolie, BSN]

First of all, I think you got snookered into participating in a project that was already not going well.

Did the previous student fail to get specific in terms of identifying the items needed, or did the hospital administrator choose to donate surplus items on hand, figuring that your school would "take them or leave them"? Either way, if I were the DON, I would probably perceive it as rude to get another phone call or personal visit from a student trying to extract other freebies from my institution.

I think your planning committee either needs to find a way to use the items you have already received, contact other possible sources such as other local institutions and ask specifically for the items you still need, or find a way to raise funds and pruchase the items yourself.

I can see both sides of the issue. Your committee is trying to put together a valuable program with limited funds. But having been raised in a family business, I can tell you that the requests from the community for donations and freebies are endless, and can't always be met. I believe your group needs to graciously accept whatever donations you receive and thank the institution for their contribution.

[Chantilly]

Thank you for your responses.

There is more to the story than what I wrote, but I did not want to post a novel. Being rude and irritating this woman is what my initial fear was when contacting her in the beginning.

The student that contacted the hospital in the beginning fax over an inventory list of items that we needed and the facility chose to donate items that had already been donated by the county health department. This student had failed to keep in contact with the advisor for this project as well as with the other students. So in essence I did join a project that had a few issues, but those issues were for the most part resolved when the two students who not contributing were removed from the project. This is something that I am really excited about being a part of, and I have high hopes that if this is successful I will be able to get my school to turn this into a community health fair in the future.

The advisor to this committee is my mentor, and I know that he would have rather I been on this thing from the get go. It's just not how it turned out. But you guys did give me a different way to look at things, and I do have other contacts that I intend to approach. I guess I kind of took getting the issues with this hospital smoothed out as kind of my own personal challenge. I guess I have a lot to think about here.