Bad management

[Jen4nursing]

I will make a long story short but our administrator has been asked to step down and he hates me so for the last couple months the manager on my unit takes me directly to him for anything (all had nothing to do with nursing it was only gossip from coworkers) so I am under the assumption that they are trying to get rid of me. There are several nurses and CNAs that are also quitting and I am too after all they are trying to fire me so I believe. The administrator is a narcissist (said by many a nurse). The management run to him for everything. I have never seen such poor management ever. They are bullies and i know hes stepping down soon but i couldnt take the bullying anymore so i quit l. Should i have stayed? What would you have done?

[Qing]

You are very lucky you did not get fired and left. I would count your blessings because bad management will be around somewhere. I have learned it depends on how you approach a person and you need to judge how they will respond to you. Some people are easier to work with and unfortunately some are very lazy or do not like to be asked to do something. Regardless of that you still need a balance of how to approach the person to do what you are asking. How I think I am to someone may not come out that way so if not you just have to acknowledge it. I have made that mistake and realized that how i said something did not come out the way I wanted so I patched it up with the colleague. Even though you are frustrated be aware people will take advantage of it and turn it into an opportunity to get someone in trouble or twist words. Anyway I do hope you are in better position with your new job and just be wary. Nurses have so much on the plate to deal with but it is really worth seeing patients getting better in front of us.

[Jen4nursing]

Thank you Qing

I am respectful to my CNAs i know they have a hige workload just like me. I ask them if they need help and they tell me no thankyou we got it then i find out they tell the other nurse on Opposite days that i never help them. The other nurse never backs me up and so i am portrayed to be the mean one. I am just fed up with the insubordination its supose to be a team effort to help the patients but i see that LTC is just for highschool drama and to get away with what you can and still get a paycheck. I have a new job and the staff are phenomenal i dont have to babysit the CNAs they know what their job entitles and they care for the latients. We work as a team not plot against each other. I guess the environment was bad at my old job. All they cared about was a paycheck. This new team cares about each ither and getting each other through a shift with the best patient care we can provide as a team. I just needed an environment i could thrive in not die in.

Thank you for all the responses i do take them seriously and am not offended.

[TriciaJ, RN]

Two things stand out: 1. It sounds like you're in a very toxic workplace with poor management. They don't seem to run a very tight ship with CNAs picking and choosing what they'll do and being insubordinate and people constantly tattling on one another. It probably is a good idea to leave that place and seek a better situation elsewhere.

2. You do need to self-reflect as others have advised. A toxic work environment doesn't bring out the best in people and it's easy to get caught up in the drama. It's important that you take your most professional self to your next job. Only you can evaluate what you most need to work on: is it stress management? assertiveness? verbal and written communication skills?

Time to move forward. Good luck.

[Jen4nursing]

Thankyou Tricia J RN

You are corrct it is easy to fall into the trap and i do look at myself often and i need to work on my assertiveness for sure. That has always been my weakness to avoid conflict I just do it myself but as a nurse there comes a time when we need help and where i worked you were on your own. I have moved on i work with colleagues now that have the same compassion and we work well togethef and have the same work ethic. I just needed a kick in the butt to leave and find the right environment. Thank you

[Ruby Vee, BSN]

Thank you for responding Ruby Vee

I tried to get right to the point without dragging on anyway it statrtes when i had trouble with a cna being insubordinate i had a patient pass away and protocol is for the nurse to call the manager anyway the cna called and notified manager when i confronted her she yelled at me at the nursing station and said she is my friend i can call her and tell her i tried to explain but she kept screaming at me so i yelled back enough we are giing outside now. She was friens with management and staff so i got a write up immediately for being mean. Anyway almost a year later and i needed help with a resident and asked nicely for a cna to help me real quick and they responded ill be there in a minute so i raised my voice a little in a sense of urgency no now. The manager came out and pointed her finger in my face and said the cnas were conplaining that i was mean and disrespecting them and that i cannot talk to staff like that. So next day i went with the manager to the administrators office as directed and i git wrote up explanation was you have a history of yelling at staff which is completely false. Third incident was when a cna refused to do her job so i reported her and sent her home she got a write up and the next you guessed it i was called in the office with administrator and manager and was told that the cnas said i was mean. So yes another write up and them saying again i have a history. Ugh feeling frustrated i went back to work anyway and ever since management takes every complaint to the administrator she never attempts to do it through the chain of command. They bully you because they know if the nurse says anything we will be written up. The gossip there is ridiculous and the residents are highly neglected by the cnas so staff has reported them and always end up fired so yes i quit i feel i did the right thing as they were lying and the administrator would not let me defend myself instead he would just stop you from talking and talk about what a wonderful administrator he is.

From an outsider's point of view, it sounds as though you threatened the CNA with a physical altercation when you yelled at her that you were going outside. That might not have been your intent, possibly it never occurred to you that it could be seen that way. But the moment you YELLED at the CNA, you were in the wrong, no matter what she was doing. And when you told her it was time to take it outside, that could have been perceived by the CNA and by management as a threat of assault and battery. You are very, very lucky you weren't fired over that one. Even if that isn't what you MEANT, it could very easily have been how it was interpreted.

You got a write up for your failure to communicate effectively with your CNAs. Meanwhile, the CNAs are probably complaining to the manager every time they don't like your tone, and your manager is getting weary of listening to the complaints. So when she heard you raise your voice, she responded. Even the best, most fair manager who has had to listen to complaints about an employee "being mean" over and over and over will find her viewpoint colored by the complaints when she witnesses something like you raising your voice to a CNA. And that's assuming your behavior was perfectly reasonable. It wasn't.

You're complaining about the CNAs bullying you, and I don't doubt they're complaining about you bullying them. Clearly you have issues in your communication with your team. Serious issues. Two write-ups should have been a clue that you had something to work on. I don't think that's dawned on you yet.

Quitting your job was probably the right approach, because they had enough documentation to start the termination process. But I suggest that you take some time and reflect upon your experience at this job, the feedback you got from management and try not to take the same toxic communication style into the next job.

Best wishes.

[martymoose, BSN, RN]

yes, it was good that you quit before being fired. Maybe now you can get a different job,somewhere where you don't have cnas under you. and not one in a nursing home.

Good luck.

[Duranie]

she yelled at me at the nursing station and said she is my friend i can call her and tell her i tried to explain but she kept screaming at me so i yelled back enough we are giing outside now.

......

i git wrote up explanation was you have a history of yelling at staff which is completely false.

well, not completely false, you had gotten written up before...

She was friens with management and staff so i got a write up immediately for being mean.

The write-up actually said "for being mean"? More likely it was for yelling at staff.

ever since management takes every complaint to the administrator she never attempts to do it through the chain of command.

What do you see as "chain of command"?.... Management -->>administration.... Seems like that was going up the chain to me...

i told him that i needed help with a resident before he falls on the floor he knew i needed help to pull him back up in his chair. As this resident slides oyr of his chair all the time i even tild he is almost ob the floor. The second was when i said outside she smokes so i said lets go outside if i need more detail i apologize i just didnt feel like writing a book. I wanted her away from the nursing station.She knows by outside i meant in the smoking area. But what she said at the nursing would take me 10 pages to write and the family of the decreased was right there listening to her screaming and yelling i figured if i had her come outside smoking area that i could get her out of the nursing station

i needed help with a resident and asked nicely for a cna to help me real quick and they responded ill be there in a minute so i raised my voice a little in a sense of urgency no now

These two descriptions just don't jive with one another....

Maybe it's because you are posting this in dribs and drabs, or because of your train-of-thought, run-on-sentence, no-capital-letters writing style (Or some combination of both, I think) ... But I don't think you are going to get the answers you are looking for. We can't comment on a situation when you've only told us like 1% of it the first time and only slightly more the next post, and honestly, after that I am no longer interested in trying to decipher what you mean, if you can't be bothered to actually tell us.

You don't have to write a verbatim transcript of what was said in order to tell us what happened with enough clarity to get meaningful input. But to expect strangers to give you advice on something that even someone who was there wouldn't be able to figure out with what you've given us (at least in the first post or 2), I think you are asking for the moon.

I will offer this: The interactions you've described here, would result in a write-up or other disciplinary action at any job, nursing or otherwise. You would be doing yourself a favor to seek help to learn how to communicate effectively with co-workers. You need to learn how to say what you mean... Not just, "she should have known I meant....", or raised voice means urgency..., etc. Your communication style is lacking, at best... and likely to end up getting you fired someday, at worst.

Good luck.

[Jen4nursing]

Thank you for your response Ruby Vee,

I do look at myself often and ask all the time i could have said bettef yes but she smokes so i know when ever she gets upset i tell lets take it outside so she knows what i meant by that. I agree management is hearing CNAs complain about all the nurses on a daily basis because they dont like to have things delegated to them but when they are taking lunch then taking another e0 minutes to eat it on the clock at the nursing station and playing on their cell phones it us a huge problem the other nurse i work with says nothing to them and they are very loud even doctors have said something to them because we couldnt hear each other talking about a critical patient and they were not nice they yelled at them to shut up. I also forgot to mention that the administrator the managers and several of the office workers and employees are family annd some have been friends for years this is why nurses dont get backed up. I agre i can work on myself too but this was 2 years running of the chaos and i got burnt out i guess you could say. I care about my patients like family and it killed me everyday to see the staff just not care. The environment was not a match for me. Although i jave met about 5 CNAs that say i was the nicest nurse they ever worked with but i never had to ask them to do their job because they just did it without question and they were good at it. Thise CNAs work PT somewhere else and they asked me to go to where they work so currently i am with the best CNAs you can get. Two of them i even talked to about going to nursing school because they were so compassionate and they are now in school for nursing. I need to work on bit letting people get under my skin and fix it before it gets to the point where i cant take it no morw but when you have complained and done write ups and nothing is fixed then you kind of feel isolated which is how i felt. I thank you for your opinion as an outsider looking in and i will take your feedback as a positive one. I think the environmnent is what did me in though.

[Jen4nursing]

I again apologize for the errors in grammar as I am writing this on my cell phone. I also would like to point out that I have never asked the CNAs to do anything except for their job. When I had time I helped pass trays, ambulate, change briefs, and put patients on and off toilets and in and out of bed and changed bedding. There were times when I was crazy busy and when I asked for vitals or to help turn a patient they would whisper amongst each other where I could hear "what a *****" and I asked nicely these were just vindictive women I have no other word for it. The other nurses told me to stop being nice thats why they are targeting you. I put up with it for a year before I started writing them up and when I started the write ups thats when they started complaining to management. Nothing was ever done and they knew they could get away with insubordination. An example was with another nurse and a new CNA the nurse asked her for vitals and the CNA started yelling at her and told her "dont tell me what i have to do i know my job i have been a CNA for 14 years "and the nurse told her "I am your superior and you will do as I ask it is in your job description" and the CNA continued to yell obscenities and the nurse told her "I am done talking to you". It was reported with witnesses and she still works there. This is why we have so many nurses quitting and they all said the same thing "The CNAs run the units". Also we do have a chain of command its like this: Nurse>>>unit manager>>>DON>>>>administrator. These steps are never taken it goes direct to the administrator because again the problem CNAs are related to him or they have been friends of the family for years. Its a no win situation. This administrator was asked to step down due to complaints from nurses. He has been fired from every administrator position he has had at other nursing facilities. The unit managers are LPNs and grandfathered in because to my knowledge they are suppose to be RNs. I was just wanting to see how other nurses dealt with insubordination when you have managers and DONs and administrators that wont back you up. Thank you all for responding.

[AutumnApple]

Two things stand out: 1. It sounds like you're in a very toxic workplace with poor management. They don't seem to run a very tight ship with CNAs picking and choosing what they'll do and being insubordinate and people constantly tattling on one another. It probably is a good idea to leave that place and seek a better situation elsewhere.

2. You do need to self-reflect as others have advised. A toxic work environment doesn't bring out the best in people and it's easy to get caught up in the drama. It's important that you take your most professional self to your next job. Only you can evaluate what you most need to work on: is it stress management? assertiveness? verbal and written communication skills?

Time to move forward. Good luck.

You put it all so elegantly.

OP, my advice to you is exactly the same as TriciaJ's. Self reflection is a must here. She is much better than me in this instance though that she said her advice elegantly (like I said she did above). I tend to be a little heavy handed responding to posts like this. If you are one who over reacts to constructive criticism (or is just seeking sympathy), stop reading here and move on to the next post.

You were the problem in all of this. I can say that with confidence being that others have already stated what I was thinking to myself as I read your OP: "You're lucky you weren't fired on the spot."

Do you know why it would take too long to tell the "whole story"? Because there are so many incidents that went far beyond the level of "professional conduct" that the story is just endless. That, and when we are communicating and looking to solicit a response from the audience, we tend to become more verbose. When we're just summarizing what happened, not so much the case. You need to tell the story in a way that makes you the victim (the reaction your are trying to solicit) instead of just saying it how it is. Hence, it's a novel instead of an average sized post.

There is something about you that seems to be bringing out the worst in the people around you. Until that changes, your experiences with future employers are going to be photocopies of this experience.

Ok, so your work environment is toxic and the supervisor is "being asked to step down" and so on, so forth. That facility you work at has hundreds of employees, and I am sure there are at least a handful there that cope with the situation just fine without all the incidents you've had. Become like them. Figure out what it is that kept you from coping as well as them. Learn from an introspective standpoint, and move forward with your primary concern being how you can do better.

The first three years of my nursing career were "The American Dream", if you were to look at it from the outside with a superficial eye. I had arrived.

I too though was a problematic individual. While my character flaws sent me in a different direction than you, at the end of my fifth year I was just another problematic employee. I was a favorite of the management and won awards, but my attitude as a whole was unbecoming and out of line.

Life events lead me to become introspective about who I was and where the "me" I had become was going to go in life. I changed.

In the absence of this introspective period, I'd have stayed the same, blamed everyone else and would have ended up with the same results for the same behaviors.

My hunch is, you are facing a choice. You can either:

1. Have your introspection now and change the path you are on.

or

2. Deny your part in things, continue to believe it was the toxic workplace bringing out the worst in you and try again elsewhere.

I do believe you will save yourself a big fall and much disappointment if you choose option one.

[Ruby Vee, BSN]

well, not completely false, you had gotten written up before...

The write-up actually said "for being mean"? More likely it was for yelling at staff.

What do you see as "chain of command"?.... Management -->>administration.... Seems like that was going up the chain to me...

These two descriptions just don't jive with one another....

Maybe it's because you are posting this in dribs and drabs, or because of your train-of-thought, run-on-sentence, no-capital-letters writing style (Or some combination of both, I think) ... But I don't think you are going to get the answers you are looking for. We can't comment on a situation when you've only told us like 1% of it the first time and only slightly more the next post, and honestly, after that I am no longer interested in trying to decipher what you mean, if you can't be bothered to actually tell us.

You don't have to write a verbatim transcript of what was said in order to tell us what happened with enough clarity to get meaningful input. But to expect strangers to give you advice on something that even someone who was there wouldn't be able to figure out with what you've given us (at least in the first post or 2), I think you are asking for the moon.

I will offer this: The interactions you've described here, would result in a write-up or other disciplinary action at any job, nursing or otherwise. You would be doing yourself a favor to seek help to learn how to communicate effectively with co-workers. You need to learn how to say what you mean... Not just, "she should have known I meant....", or raised voice means urgency..., etc. Your communication style is lacking, at best... and likely to end up getting you fired someday, at worst.

Good luck.

I agree that the writing style is problematic, as is the "dries and drabs" of information. Communication is very important in nursing, and the OP does not communicate effectively in writing -- at least not on this forum. Nor does it appear that she communicates effectively verbally. Part of it could be that English is a second language (I'm assuming the OP is multilingual, since she comes from another country), but anyone who lives and works in the US HAS to be able to communicate well both verbally and in writing in English.

The OP seems to believe that the problem is she's being "too nice." I disagree. The problem seems to be that she does not communicate directly and clearly the first time, then has to resort to yelling to convey her point or the urgency of the situation. No one likes getting yelled at; even those who are yelling at you. So the CNAs report the yelling, the manager writes it up and however many months or weeks later, it happens again. That WILL get you fired. That it hasn't already surprises me somewhat.

Jen, please get yourself some help with communicating. Perhaps a workshop on effective communication? Maybe a speech class or a writing class? I commend you for speaking English -- I have never been smart enough to learn a second language. But you need to communicate effectively.

[Ruby Vee, BSN]

I again apologize for the errors in grammar as I am writing this on my cell phone. I also would like to point out that I have never asked the CNAs to do anything except for their job. When I had time I helped pass trays, ambulate, change briefs, and put patients on and off toilets and in and out of bed and changed bedding. There were times when I was crazy busy and when I asked for vitals or to help turn a patient they would whisper amongst each other where I could hear "what a *****" and I asked nicely these were just vindictive women I have no other word for it. The other nurses told me to stop being nice thats why they are targeting you. I put up with it for a year before I started writing them up and when I started the write ups thats when they started complaining to management. Nothing was ever done and they knew they could get away with insubordination. An example was with another nurse and a new CNA the nurse asked her for vitals and the CNA started yelling at her and told her "dont tell me what i have to do i know my job i have been a CNA for 14 years "and the nurse told her "I am your superior and you will do as I ask it is in your job description" and the CNA continued to yell obscenities and the nurse told her "I am done talking to you". It was reported with witnesses and she still works there. This is why we have so many nurses quitting and they all said the same thing "The CNAs run the units". Also we do have a chain of command its like this: Nurse>>>unit manager>>>DON>>>>administrator. These steps are never taken it goes direct to the administrator because again the problem CNAs are related to him or they have been friends of the family for years. Its a no win situation. This administrator was asked to step down due to complaints from nurses. He has been fired from every administrator position he has had at other nursing facilities. The unit managers are LPNs and grandfathered in because to my knowledge they are suppose to be RNs. I was just wanting to see how other nurses dealt with insubordination when you have managers and DONs and administrators that wont back you up. Thank you all for responding.

It is possible to communicate effectively in writing using your cell phone. Unless I'm sitting in Barnes & Noble (which I am now, on my iPad) or Starbuck's, I do all of my internet on my phone. That's because I have one of those old unlimited data plans on my phone and no internet at home. Please don't let your phone be your "reason" for poor writing. Writing on these forums is an excellent way to practice your writing skills. The more you practice, the better you are at writing. If you continue to practice good writing habits while on the forums, it will be much easier for you to write well when it's time to chart or to write an email to your boss. Again, I think a writing class might help you.

I don't think the problem is you being "too nice." I think the problem is that you aren't direct; you don't communicate effectively. I don't doubt that the CNAs are recalcitrant, even lazy. I just think you'd have a better time of it if YOU communicated exactly what you needed, when and possibly why. The CNAs, however lazy and disrespectful, are people, too. If you treat them as valued team members you will have an easier time getting them to do their jobs. (Ask me how I know this. Sigh! I, too learned the hard way by alienating all of the CNAs at my work. It takes a long time and hard work to win back their good will.) Some CNAs are interested in being nurses and if you share with them the importance of turning and repositioning in avoiding decubitus ulcers, they may be more vigilant about turning. Some are just putting in their time so they can take the paycheck home to their kids. Have you ever asked them about their kids? A cheery "Good morning?" And a sincere "how are you" will go a long ways toward making those CNAs more willing to help you out. (Do their jobs.). Some CNAs are just lazy and have poor attitudes and nothing you do will help -- those are the ones you write up. Those are the only ones you write up. If management keeps hearing about how you're "mean" to the CNAs and you keep writing them all up, even the ones no one else seems to have an issue with, the problem appears to be all about YOU.

Almost no one responds well to "I am your superior and you will do as I ask." It might work out well in the military, but there is relatively little asking in the military. You give orders. Giving orders doesn't work well in civilian life.

Yelling is never OK -- not even when you do it. Not even if you're yelling at someone who is swearing at you. Just don't do it.