Nervous Newbie with clueless management?

Specialties Home Health

Published

Specializes in OB,HH.

Hi, brand new to this forum but need to reach out to someone for advice and y'all seem pretty friendly!

Ive been in HH for 3+ years and Ive become so frustrated this past few months......... I work for a very small agency in a very large very rural area which of course translates to lots of snowy driving. I dont mind the driving but management is driving me crazy! I work just 3 days a week and until recently was used mostly as back-up for case managers and to cover weekends- this suited me fine, I dont want any more hours than that. About 5 months ago 1 of the 2 full time case managers had to go on medical leave and ever since then this job has been a nightmare. For the first 3 or 4 months they just dumped the caseload onto all the rest of us. While management continued on yukking it up in the coffee room for hours and having wonderful long holiday vacations, the rest of us were scrambling with 12 hours worth of work every shift. I watched with amazement as the part time case managers fell months behind in their charting and when I finally had seen enough I made the mistake of rather bluntly asking the nursing supervisor what the heck they intended to do about this? I had the perception we were in a crisis but they kept acting like it would all just go away and continued taking every single referral that came along, recerting everyone, and piling on more and more. There was no real response to my outburst, then a few weeks ago suddenly they have gone in a new direction every week. Care has become so fractured patients are seeing 3 or 4 different nurses instead of the ideal one case manager- and you know how the details get dropped when that happens.

Any advice on how to handle this? They aren't acting open to suggestions, I get a "just do as you're told attitude "and snarky comments about my attitude. Then I get a different action plan of how they are going to approach the problem every week. Should I just keep my mouth shut and do what Im told to do and let them sort it out? Its not my job to run the place so that is my first inclination, but obviously I havent been very good at hiding my frustration. Im starting to look at the classifieds, and my poor husband is tired of hearing me rant and rave. Help!

Specializes in OB,HH.

looking at this I realize i need to clarify- im neither new nor nervous about HH Nursing- its writing things on this forum that are new and terrifying to me......

You answered yourself in your post. You have two choices: keep your mouth shut and carry on, or find another job. I've been in similar situations and learned long ago that most of the time even when mgmt acts like they are open to input, there will be negative outcomes for anyone who has the gumption to speak up or offer suggestions. They don't want to hear it. They don't want to hear it from you. Anything you tell them is not going to be received in a positive manner. So don't make it any worse for yourself. Just make a decision concerning your two choices. Otherwise your poor hubby will have to suffer even more and he didn't do anything concerning this. He might tell you something like just do your job when you're at the job and when you're at home, tend to your family life. Don't make yourself sick over mgmt types that don't lose sleep about you. Believe me, if they cared, they would have fixed the problem by hiring a new case manager a long time ago.

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