Minor things people get fired/wrote up over,,,give examples.

Nurses Professionalism

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I just read a post about an RT who was fired for handing a patient some cough medicine on behalf of an RN who asked them to hand it to them, I guess the RT was working outside of their scope,,but that was pretty minor... Also, someone told me to never do vitals out in the hallway where everyone can see due to privacy. It would be easy to get tricked into or pressured into doing stuff like that.

What are some other things that one may find minor or even tricked into that you can get in trouble for?

Thanks to anyone who post!

Specializes in Emergency, Telemetry, Transplant.
I got written up for giving someone a snack in the hallway. She did not want to stay in her room because her and her roommate were not getting along so she scooted out into the doorway with her cookies and someone from admin walked by and wasted their time finding out who committed this egregious offense. I still think I only got written up because they were worried about the possibility of crumbs on the carpet. :nono:

When I was an aide in LTC, we gave snacks in the hallway all the time. Is this prohibited most places? By whom (the facility or a regulatory agency)? (sorry to get off topic...since most people were using this as an example, it kinda bothers me)

1 Votes
Specializes in NICU.

Just a thought for those who have too many absences. If you have a condition that will keep you out several days or intermittently (and you meet certain requirements such as number of hours worked, etc.) FMLA is a great way to protect your job.

The whole food in the hall thing seems kind of silly. If the LTC is considered the resident's home, he/she should be able to eat wherever they darn well please...:rolleyes:

1 Votes
Also, someone told me to never do vitals out in the hallway where everyone can see due to privacy. It would be easy to get tricked into or pressured into doing stuff like that.

I'm sorry, that's ridiculous in an acute care setting. We do vitals in the whole all the freaking time if it's necessary - pt goes for a walk, suddenly gets really dizzy and/or SOB, staff come to help and bring them to the closest chair and yes, take vital signs. It would be foolish to move the person back to a private room prior to doing so. Anyhow, no one gets in trouble for it either to be fair at my facility, but this strikes me as one of those (many) places where HIPPA sometimes gets in the way of safe patient care.

I also don't see why giving an OTC medication to a co-worker would be an offense - you don't need a doc prescription for those (hence, OTC) and they're not a patient anyway. That sounds like power tripping to me.

My facility does scold people sometimes for dumb documentation stuff or staying late to finish up the ever-growing task list they've given us (insult to injury much?), but comparatively it seems basically fine. I'm also glad we don't have too many people on my floor who go running to HR every time someone is a little snarky - I'd much rather have people who will confront each other than be passive aggressive. Although I agree that most of the time that stuff is politics.

2 Votes
Specializes in medical surgical.

That was the problem. Someone ran off to HR to say that I documented my assessments as 2245 instead of 2300. I lost my job over it. Now I CANNOT even get unemploment. BTW, I also do not count in the unemloyment figures since I was denied. I wonder how many others are out there like me. That means the unemployment numbers are significantly incorrect (big suprise).

Specializes in Emergency Dept. Trauma. Pediatrics.
My coworker whom is a CNA, got yelled at for not closing the door and or the privacy curtain when changing/putting resident to bed after lunch. Another CNA got in trouble for giving a resident a snack in the middle of the hallway. Must be something going on, I am glad I work once a month.

I would have to agree with a write up if the CNA was repeatedly not shutting the door or privacy curtain while changing patients. This is one of my biggest pet peeves I see in the hospital and that I had as a patient. I don't think the write up should happen the first incidence but if it kept happening I would feel it's appropriate. It doesn't take any extra time to pull the curtain or shut the door and patients deserve privacy especially during things like being changed.

I just read a post about an RT who was fired for handing a patient some cough medicine on behalf of an RN who asked them to hand it to them, I guess the RT was working outside of their scope,,but that was pretty minor... Also, someone told me to never do vitals out in the hallway where everyone can see due to privacy. It would be easy to get tricked into or pressured into doing stuff like that.

What are some other things that one may find minor or even tricked into that you can get in trouble for?

Thanks to anyone who post!

I've never even seen vitals done in the hall way before. :|

Specializes in LTC.
When I was an aide in LTC, we gave snacks in the hallway all the time. Is this prohibited most places? By whom (the facility or a regulatory agency)? (sorry to get off topic...since most people were using this as an example, it kinda bothers me)

I have no idea. Everyone I work with gives snacks in the hallway. Recreation has fake cocktail parties and ice cream socials all the time and they transport people all over the place with food and drinks. I can see how it could be construed as an infection control issue (staff is not supposed to keep a drink at the desk unless it is covered), but when the person is just sitting there, it seems kind of dumb. More germs get stirred up in the dining room.

Breakfast and lunch take about an hour, and we have snack/drink runs after every meal. If we couldn't bring food into the hallway people would be confined to their rooms all day.

This particular person is obsessed with keeping everything looking spotless so I really think that she was just angry about crumbs on the floor.

Specializes in ICU, ED, Trauma, Transplant.

Oh gosh, petty write-ups are the bane of my existence. At my very first nursing job, I was repeatedly written up for the stupidest things. Here's a few examples that stick out in my head:

I was written up by the next shift for leaving a saline flush on a bedside table. When I asked the manager why they wrote me up over that. I was told that the saline flush COULD have had a medication instilled in it, and unsupervised meds were against policy. Of course, that makes sense, but I said that if I remembered correctly, it was a sealed flush STILL in the cellophane wrapping that I placed on the bedside table, so there was no way it was REALLY a med. When asked if it being sealed up would have made any difference, the manager said it would have, but the documentation in the write-up paperwork didn't say if that was clear or not, so I was still getting in trouble.

Fast forward a couple weeks later, I got written up because the shift after me found a colace in my patient's bed. I was upset that I got pegged for it because 1) I make sure that my patients swallow their pills and 2) I never GAVE a colace to any patient that night. It was most likely the shift before mine. The manager said the colace wasn't the issue. The patient was a 19 year old who had a lap chole, and I got in trouble because it was obvious that I had never done a full body skin assessment, otherwise I would have found it in the bed when I pulled down the sheets. Why would I do a full body skin assessment on an ambulatory 19 year old kid who was going to DC the next AM?? Jeez...

Oh, and I was charge nurse one night, and the day shift charge nurse yelled to me in front of the public elevators where visitors and doctors were coming through, "Hey, you! I wrote you up because patient in room 3 got a bedsore on your shift last night!" Doesn't it take longer than 8 hrs to develop skin breakdown, so what makes her think it happened on MY shift? Wasn't SHE violating HIPAA by yelling that down the hall to me? And I wasn't even that patient's nurse that night. I was being written up because I was in charge the night before they discovered it, and I "should have been knowing what was going on with every patient on the unit", even though I had 6 patients myself and it was a full 20-bed unit. And that day shift charge never got in trouble for violating HIPAA and embarrassing me in the public hallway.

I was a brand new nurse when all this happened. Turns out, this unit, specifically the day shift who followed me, had a horrendous reputation for trying to weed out people they didn't like, and I was one of them. Why didn't they like me? I found out a year or so after I left that they didn't like me because I "asked too many questions and anyone who asks so many questions is too dumb to be a nurse". And all those stupid things I was doing that warranted being written up was apparently proof of that. It also didn't help that the nurse manager was a day shift staff nurse on that floor before she got hired into that manager position, so I was being managed by someone with the same attitude. I lasted about a year before I could actually move away, then I moved to a new city and to a large hospital where I was accepted into an ICU/ED internship and I've been doing really well. And oddly enough, I've NEVER been written up these last six years I've been here.

I think that those nurses probably had every right to write me up for those things, but at the same time, I think they could have used their time on the clock more wisely and provided good patient care on their shift instead of taking that time doing paperwork.

Where I work now, the only time we write up incidents (that's the key thing there; we write up incidents and name everyone who was part of the incident, we don't write up people just for doing something we think is dumb) when there's the potential there for anyone to be harmed.

I basically think write-ups over petty garbage are just done by work place bullies.

3 Votes
Specializes in Home Health.

Petty write-ups **** me off, but petty write-ups for new nurses is the worst. Instead of writing these folks up, we should be coaching them up. I mean, that's a great way to teach them simple things that will make them better nurses.

3 Votes
Specializes in Hospital Education Coordinator.

sometimes these issues are the straw that broke the camel's back, not just one incident. You might not be aware of the employee's HR record. For instance, absences related to illness in my facility are counted by event, not duration. So a long hospital stay is one event. 10 absences that were only 1 day each would be 10 incidences. The hospital needs to count on people to be there. If there is a true, chronic disability that is another thing but still requires appropriate paperwork thru HR

Lost my job for clocking in 8 minutes before my shift.

Company fought unemployment but I won.

Had previously discussed with employer that since the facility did not have a charge nurse (She was fired 3 weeks before) I had to take on the role since i was the only day Nurse for 30 residents.

Co. lost there business due to finances and poor management.

What goes around comes around!

1 Votes
Specializes in Pediatrics.

This is a very interesting thread. it really makes you think about the little things we do, that can be misconstrued as wrong. (also makes me glad I don't work in the hospital FT :eek: ).

The ones regarding doing things in the hallway seem to fall under 'privacy' issues. I would say most of these would be difficult to dispute (except for the snack ones, which probably fall under 'infection control' issues).

I would say quite a few of these are examples of nurses eating their young:mad:

OTOH, I wholeheartedly agree that some of these 'minor' offenses are the last of many offenses. Kind of like the student who fails out by only one question :o. We, the masses, only hear one side of the story. It's human nature for the victim to minimize their role in the problem (I only did ____ ). I know there are exceptions to all cases, but remember, management needs to answer to a higher authority, and they should be thinking twice before firing someone who will likely file a suit. And when dealing with a union job, they are going to go through the appropriate steps (and have it well documented) before they fire someone. Hence, the reprimands (AKA verbal warnings).

1 Votes
Specializes in ICU.

Relatively new nurse (few years), but very good with patients and everybody in general. The nurse you loved have take care of your Dad. Took ICU patient on a road trip to interventional radiology to to have Dobhoff feeding tube placed post-pyloric. Road trip took 3 hours. They _just_ got back, settling back into room. RN turns her back and pt (obviously confused) pulls the tube right out. *TA-DA!* :yeah: Nurse reacts with a therapeutic "WHAT THE **** DID YOU DO???" :eek:

Ooops, that was it. No questions asked, escorted out immediately by security, they cleaned out her locker for her.

Just that fast. :crying2:

2 Votes
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