Best Holiday Gift Given by Your Hospital

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Holidays approaching, and the signup list is already in the lounge. Last year we got $10 grocery cards, I think, and the year before we got $10 gas cards. No, really, I think that's all we really got, not to sound greedy. What are the best gifts your hospital every gave you?

Thanks!

Specializes in ICU, CCU,Wound Care,LTC, Hospice, MDS.
What's a holiday gift???

I agree! Actually , I once worked at a place that gave us a turkey. But otherwisw everywhere else, it's nada.

Specializes in LTC.

They served a hot meal for day and evening shifts and then on nights we got a nice layout of deli-meats and salads. It was really nice.

Specializes in Critical Care, Capacity/Bed Management.
What's a holiday gift???

My thoughts exactly... We get absolutely nothing for thanksgiving and christmas. Since we have an affilation with a church the nuns pass milk and cookies christmas morning and that is about it.

For nurse's week they wanted us to holah hoop for prizes.... I refused.

I got a 1/2 lb box of See's Candy --I guess the 1 lb box was too expensive.

But when I worked at a peds office we got $100 for every year we worked there! And I worked there 13 yrs before I left!

We got $25 grocery cards last year.

To be honest, this is the first industry I've worked in where people expect to get gifts a couple of times a year. As a matter of fact, it's the first one I've worked in that ever got gifts, too.

I'm starting to wonder if we really are starting to feel a little "entitled." We get gifts during Nurse's Week and at Christmas and they're not bad...we got a plant during Nurse's Week (and I LIKE plants) and at Christmas, our employee council goes shopping and gets things like CD players, coolers, coffee makers, etc and wraps them up. You choose a wrapped present at the Christmas party (which is a really nice party) and that is what you get. All of the gifts are in the $25 range and people who work during the party not only get a gift, but they also get a $25 gift card and a $25 gift certificate for whatever restaurant we have the party at.

I've worked places that give horrible gifts (like a 1998 calendar on December 18, 1998) and to be honest, I would have rather had nothing at all. Sometimes the little trinket things or the things that vendors give the managers for free are a bit insulting to give as a gift, so it really would almost be better for mangement to use the pens and sticky notes themselves or just stick them randomly at the nurse's station.

I know a lot of employers give some sort of holiday gift, but when did it become mandatory? I'm not going to turn down any gift that they give me, but I really wonder if I should feel so entitled.

A friend of mine works for a hospital that gave all employees from house keeping to the MDs iPod shuffles in 2006 for "employee appreciation." My hospital doesn't give us crap!

I got a can of mixed nuts once- and it was the chintzy kind with a lot of peanuts.

Here we get a $20 gift certificate to the hospital gift shop. Actually it's a nice gesture because it supports the volunteer auxiliary.

We have a tradition at my place that the department that has the recognition week puts on a potluck for the rest of the employees (we're only a 25-bed hospital). All the bigger departments do it- not just nursing. Lab, x-ray, housekeeping- they put out food for everyone. They make a platter and put it in the fridge for the night shift too. I think it's a nice tradition, not just "gimme, gimme, gimme". For nurses week the nursing staff got a subscription to one of those online nursing CEU sites, and a $25 gift certificate to a uniform shop.

For the record, my dad owned a small business and he gave his employees a gift each year, in addition to their Christmas bonus and he took them out to dinner. So I guess other industries do recognize their employees at Christmas time.

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