Can your department force you to precept?

[FirstLadyRN]

Can your department force you to precept? It's not that I don't feel qualified. It's more of a mental health thing. Right now I don't feel positive. I really don't want to precept or charge. I just want to hyper focus on my patients for 12 hours. I sent an email to management a week ago. No response. And I'm still on the schedule to charge and precept. I'm exhausted. I don't think I can do that

 

 

 

[Rose_Queen, BSN, MSN, RN]

Sometimes, there just isn't a choice. I make the assignments for orientees in the OR. We have 45 ORs, and 48 people on orientation. You don't even need to do the math to know that every OR is going to have at least 1 orientee if not 2. Travelers cannot precept so that knocks a few more ORs out of the options. So yes, even though someone may have reached out and said they can't precept, no one has a choice. Not the management team, not the education team, not the orientee, and not the staff. Now, we do have people who have requested not to have orientees in their very first weeks when they truly know nothing, and that we will work around. But once they've completed the foundation course and are moving into the specialty rotations they will still be placed with those folks. Unfortunately, until staffing is at a point where there aren't as many orientees (or more!) than experienced staff, this will be the reality. It's not that leadership doesn't want to respect a need for a break, it's that we're stuck between a rock and a hard place too.

[kp2016]

Short answer, Yes