Attitude Problem

[AngiePansRN]

Hi,

Yea, I'm writing mostly because I'm POed right now. I have been working in a dialysis clinic for the past year while I completed my fourth and final year of nursing school. I just graduated, passed the boards and got a great job in an ICU :) But the job doesn't start until Sept. so I've been perdiem at the dialysis clinic as a tech and will be until Sept. (By the time I would be done with training to work at the clinic as a nurse, it would be time for me to leave). It's been hard to work as a tech even though I'm an RN!

So to get to the point.. over the past year I have very much been turned off by the nurses I work with. Our standard assignments are 3 patients per tech/nurse. However, the night nurse likes to forgoe any assignments and just "take them as they come." This often means that I'll put on/take off 4 or 5 while the nurse does other nursely duties (and chats and eats, etc.) Am I wrong to feel that I should not have to take care of more than 3 patients or is it really the tech's job to do as much patient care as they can so the nurse is free to do.. um... paperwork?

And it really bugs me when all the blood pressures are going off and the nurses completely ignore them and I and the other techs have to run around the room like crazy while they sit there and print up a medication report. Or when as soon as i walk in the door the nurse says "oh good you can have my assignment, bye."

we have this new nurse that is a new RN (associates) training. she hasn't been an RN for more than 2 months and already she has caught this disease. I just feel like these nurses are avoiding the essence of what they do: patient care. They would rather sit around and do paperwork that touch a patient. I had a BP going off for 15 minutes the other day before I got to it.. found the patients BP to be 70/40. The nurse stood by and let it beep for 15 minutes. If this patient had coded it would have been because of the nurse's irresponsibility.

Has anyone else seen this trend in dialysis? It really makes me feel like crap and these nurses.. if anything.. have taught me how NOT to treat techs/cna's/etc.

sorry for the rant!

[GeauxNursing]

our charge nurse runs the show. the FA is pretty good at working to get adequate staffing and bring in new patients, but she might lack some "people skills". Our charge nurse keeps everyone happy. She is a liason b/t FA and staff, patients and social work, Doctors and patients. She came in and turned around our clinic. We used to not have a sense of who was in charge, who do we go to with problems? She has made everything awesome! She works her tail off to make sure everything gets done, every single day. I am sure she didn't know waht she was getting in to when she was hired. At that time, we had plenty of nurses. Today, it is her, a newly hired nurse, and the FA. She works usually 5 days a week, 12 hour shifts. She does everything. She handles everything. We all go to her for advice, concerns, questions. She makes the schedule and the assignments. She deals with the doctors and the hospitals. She organizes our "fun days" and pot lucks. I personally feel that she has more power than the FA, just because of her professionalism and her ability to handle all that goes on. I do not mean to undermine my boss in any way. It's just that our nurse is amazing. we wouldn't have the best lab values in our region without her. when she came, we probably had a 40 percent catheter population. and today we are down to 5 catheters. she really cares about us and the patients. She is the reason our clinic rocks!

[Migrant_Renal_RN]

That rocks!! Your clinic is very lucky indeed!!

[BellaCerraRN]

OUCH! I'm an ADN and while in clinicals I was teaching 3rd year BSN students how to do things because the only thing they'd been taught so far is how to do an assessment and push paperwork!

[steelcityrn, RN]

Lazy nurses are in all departments of nursing. They reduce the moral and effect everyone.