Well, I want to say first that I fully understand that hospitals expect you to be at work no matter what the weather.
I always go. I go for other people. That's why I have a four wheel drive. However, sometimes there is bad timing. Such as major snow that falls heavily and rapidly.
I got up, took a shower, got in the car to go to work. I swept it off the night before, got gas the night before, washed my uniform and had it pressed in case the power went out.
I warmed up the car, went off my driveway...moved about 15 feet and it slid into the yard.
The vehicle would not move.
So for the first time in years...I don't call in sick but maybe once a year. Never for weather.
I have PTO right? Lots of it because I never call in.
Get this...hospital is not allowing me to use my PTO for that day.
Freaking ridiculous. So if anyone else makes an attempt and wrecks. Call the news right after the tow truck. The general public should know that hospitals don't care about the safety of their employees. So this crappie about the fact they do? They can stick it as far as I'm concerned.
Life is too short , period . The beauty of nursing you can switch jobs in a sec. My calling was never hospital and its politics , stress, over worked & underpaid! As a home care nurse I get payed more then hospital nurses the amount of stress is reduced to 30% , PTO ?! What ?! I take my PTO for anything , all you do is send an email and that's it. You make your own hours and schedule . When I discovered home care I never looked back to hospital and its but crap . All my family works in hospital but is too late for them to leave they invested to many years , and they advices me hospital is not what you want & they were right ! Hospitals is not Florence nightingale anymore is all about DINERO meaning business , don't take personal is just business & hospital politics , you will never be appreciated only by 2% of patients lol best of luck on your next PTO request !
I am just thinking of the hero nurses/EMTs/paramedics/doctors during events like Hurricane Katrina.....no electricity, or even decent drinking water for days.....
And we are squabbling over PTO here.
I feel ashamed right now. Carry on.
Eh....we didnt all get into nursing to be a hero.
Just being the devils advocate here. Obviously there will be epic poems written about me after my death.
Okay, so OP....I would honestly be a bit irritated on principle if they werent paying out my PTO. (But in reality I would want to save my PTO for a Caribbean vacation.) I get why it made you unhappy.
But at this point....your choices are to
#1 take it to HR and fight them for your PTO.
#2 stew about it and live in your unhappiness.
#3 call it a bum deal and put it out of your mind.
i hope that you choose #1 or #3, for your own sake.
Honestly, I am a little surprised at the overall response that you got in this thread, but internet forums can be unpredictable. My perspective is that there are other issues of somewhat equal importance/unimportance that others get all up in arms about (talk show hosts, rude coworkers from varying generations, rude doctors, being throw under the bus by management). Everybody has their "thing" that frustrates them about this profession and I don't know that its fair for anyone else to decide which are worthwhile and which are not. If this is a battle that you want to fight, then you go! Aren't people always saying that the poor working conditions of nurses are because nobody speaks up? I'm certainly not going to judge you if this is an issue that you want to speak up about.
No, just one that acted like she knew more about this area than I do and attempted to say I did nothing to prepare.
As if I sat at home and ate bon bons and hoped for sunshine.
Go back and read from the beginning. I went up and beyond. Nurses here DO NOT get paid enough to stay at hotels throughout the winter. The cost of a hotel here is about 80% of what you would make for the entire shift. You can't just walk out a few days in advance and abandon your family on snow that may or may not fall.
Around here it doesn't fall more than it does.
Notice the people offering solutions...oh...I was there because they let us stay, air mattress on the floor, etc. You can do that...if the hospital allows it.
I was accused of leaving my unit short staffed. Notice nobody asked of it was. It wasn't.
Assumptions. Assumptions.
So you are this filled with rage because of what ONE anonymous human being wrote about you on the internet? Why give away your power and serenity so easily?
Since you don't want to pursue this with your hospital, what do you gain personally by continuing to stay so angry about it? Lashing out at others doesn't change anything, it just keeps you upset.
But maybe you like feeling upset, I don't know.
Are there others where you work with similar feelings about this? Seems like there would be power with numbers.
I'm amazed at the tenaciousness of some of you in sticking to a thread, arguing your points, especially the OP. I remember when I started a miscalculated thread here, where I got attacked en mass. I gave one response, then let them carry on without me.
Specializes in Specializes in L/D, newborn, GYN, LTC, Dialysis.
Eh....we didnt all get into nursing to be a hero.
Just being the devils advocate here. Obviously there will be epic poems written about me after my death.
I would bet those nurses/docs/EMTs and other first responders had no grand intentions of being heros either. They really had little choice in the matter. They just did the right thing.
The OP's whining here is tedious. I am out (shame on me, I should have been gone long ago)
Specializes in Specializes in L/D, newborn, GYN, LTC, Dialysis.
Just another reason to not work in a hospital...
Indeed. And I don't.
We had a bad snowstorm coming a few years back. Our boss booked several hotel rooms just 2 blocks from work ahead of time. She thought about the staff and made it possible for us to work and sleep in relative comfort and we had food to eat. The hospital I used to work at did not do any such thing.
Specializes in Gerontology, Med surg, Home Health.
It's not just nurses who work in acute care. ANY facility that provides 24 hour care is in the same boat. Care needs don't diminish just because it snows.
Chocolate_RN85
91 Posts
Life is too short , period . The beauty of nursing you can switch jobs in a sec. My calling was never hospital and its politics , stress, over worked & underpaid! As a home care nurse I get payed more then hospital nurses the amount of stress is reduced to 30% , PTO ?! What ?! I take my PTO for anything , all you do is send an email and that's it. You make your own hours and schedule . When I discovered home care I never looked back to hospital and its but crap . All my family works in hospital but is too late for them to leave they invested to many years , and they advices me hospital is not what you want & they were right ! Hospitals is not Florence nightingale anymore is all about DINERO meaning business , don't take personal is just business & hospital politics , you will never be appreciated only by 2% of patients lol best of luck on your next PTO request !