Wrote this as an op-ed for a newspaper (think NY Times or the Wall Street Journal) in a moment of frustration and decided not to submit since it probably wouldn't be published. The audience is the general public.
Hello, from one of your high or low performing hospital's staff nurses.
Who? Oh right...the nurses who keep my hospital running but I don't even see what's in front of my face, that's who.
The abused, the yelled at, the under compensated, the stressed out, and over worked nurses.
Yes, all of the above is true.
Nursing shortage?
Your outer excuse for not allowing your nurse managers to post and fill staff nurse positions which they ask for weekly.
Nurses don't bill for services. Too bad for us, because if we did, we would be treated better. We are lumped together with the dietary aids, housekeeping, and those who stock the storeroom. Easy to fire and replace at will.
Healthcare is a business, people. Hospital administrators don't care about you; they care about your money. Doctors and nurses do care about you, but they are just caught up in the system. So what do we want from you, our boss' bosses?
We want reasonable expectations from hospital management and we want someone to be on our side. We don't want another lunchbag or pen for nurses week; we want our voices to be heard. We want to feel like we own the hospital and not just work there.
Patient satisfaction is huge, but it's not because hospital administrators care about their patients. They care about the reimbursement tied to patient satisfaction. They will make the job of their nurses harder to please their customers or patients. This makes the nurses unhappy because they can't do their job as well and their satisfaction with their job lessens. Add this on to other on the job stresses and your nurse retention rate suffers. Which probably doesn't bother you that much, since nurses are replaceable, right?
If you want to improve customer satisfaction you must make sure your nurses are happy. Ask any nurse and this is what he or she will tell you. Happy nurses equal happy patients. The majority of you are in violation of labor laws which allow your hospital's nurses to get an uninterrupted break each shift. From my personal experience, which you lack, the only way this will happen is if you staff for a relief nurse on each unit on each shift who is there solely to cover other nurses when they take their well deserved breaks.
Staffing is another issue which is in your control. Hire more nurses and lower your ratios! No nurse should be taking care of seven plus acutely ill patients. It is not safe.
I'm an ER nurse. I have seen the abuse against nurses from patients. Screaming, yelling, hitting, biting, spitting, profanity, sexual comments/groping, twisting arms, throwing objects, and punching are just some of the experiences nurses go through daily. This has to stop. This should not be tolerated. There should be zero tolerance for this type of violence and assault. If this were to happen outside of the hospital, charges could be pressed. Every hospital should take this type of abuse seriously. All cases of rude, inappropriate, and dangerous behavior should be reported immediately and a police officer should be available at all times to file a report about the occurrence and see if charges can be filed. There are laws in place protecting healthcare workers. Many hospitals have police officers staffed in the emergency department and following up on such cases can be an extension of their role.
I hope you take these points into consideration and make nursing better for us.
Sincerely,
An anonymous nurse on her way to burn out and orthopedic surgery who will NOT give up on this profession.
Perhaps increase in drug use,and/or self entitlement issues? "I am not getting my way so I will hit the nurse."
This is unacceptable. We are people too.
Unions get you fired in TN. But we can at least file assault charges as needed against violent patients.
In orientation at my current facility, we were told if a patient attacks us we are not allowed to defend ourselves and should just roll into a ball. If we defend ourselves we would be fired.
I laughed at the person giving the presentation and said "if someone attacks me they better have two beds waiting in the ER for me and the person who attacks me because at least one of us will need emergency medical care!"
In orientation at my current facility, we were told if a patient attacks us we are not allowed to defend ourselves and should just roll into a ball. If we defend ourselves we would be fired.
I laughed at the person giving the presentation and said "if someone attacks me they better have two beds waiting in the ER for me and the person who attacks me because at least one of us will need emergency medical care!"
I agree! I am most definitely NOT going to just "roll up in a ball,"....especially on the nasty hospital floor! I am NOT allowing someone, especially if they are totally alert and oriented, to beat me up. I am not a club bouncer, wrestler, or kickboxer. I will defend myself as well. If the patient is an elderly dementia patient..... different story. When i feel a situation is escalating, or if a patient is cursing/angry, I will shut the door and walk away on that person who is acting a fool then call security or the sheriff's department. I don't get paid to be a punching bag!
If I were assaulted and fired for pressing charges against an assaulting family member and got fired...I would be contacting an attorney, EEO and anyone else I could think of, including and especially the News people. If the assault was bad enough, the threat of being fired would not be enough to scare me and I do believe that I would win against an employer that not only did not protect me from violence but one that would fire me for demanding justice.
Ok, a bit over-the-top but I am tired of the biggest bullies being the bosses/corporations that hire us. I thought that in America we already faught for and won better working conditions but it seems as though we, as a nation, are steadily falling backwards.
If the public knew why we were slow to answer lights, did not do anything for their pain (in LTC institutions and the new federal regs for dispensing), didn't get immediately to that altered lab etc, and if they knew how many, many, many times we saved their lives (collectively) despite all that we are against, they would be afraid. Very afraid. And they would opt to fight for nurses loudly rather than relegate us to being 'just a nurse' or in stressful times, that 'bleepity bleep nurse didn't do X, Y or Z'.
I know from being on the floor as well as, being on management side what we do and at times, how little we have to do it with. I am stunned many times by what I have been expected to do (essentially put a person on life support in a LTC facility with a 10L O2 tank...yes, it happened, take care of 100 patients, take a 28 patient load and accept 3 - 5 new admits with at least 3 trachs and various levels of acuity...throw in a few mid-level wandering alzheimers patients on top). And more impressed with the ingenuity, tenacity, strength, courage, love and patience that I see nurses use to get through the day...many days. Too many days.
Ok, that's it...off the soap box.
The sad reality is that if they did fire you, they would never actually say that is was because you reported an assault. It would be for some other reason, no matter how lame.
Specializes in Med/Surg, OR, Peds, Patient Education.
The sad reality is that if they did fire you, they would never actually say that is was because you reported an assault. It would be for some other reason, no matter how lame.
David, you sound as if you are a very well educated, competent, dedicated nurse, and will find employment in another facility. Meanwhile, yes, hire an attorney, and tell the media the cold hard truth regarding what you endured.
Specializes in Med/Surg, OR, Peds, Patient Education.
CHESSIE I have been following the responses with interest. I just realized that you are 78 years young! Do you still practice nursing?[/quote']
No, Lev, I retired ten years ago, but I keep in touch, on a weekly basis, with my former coworkers. I know that the dangerously low staffing, the norm when I was employed, has become worse in the ten years since my retirement.
Where I work there have been a lot of angst with huge financial issues to the point of reduction of work force and closing off site clinics being discussed. Our director was walking around asking staff to take off w/o pay because she had to cut her budget and she was determined to cut it because "nothing is going to stop me from getting my bonus." The place is in the RED, how do u justify having a reduction of work force but all management (including to CEO) taking home a 3 figure bonus?
Where I work there have been a lot of angst with huge financial issues to the point of reduction of work force and closing off site clinics being discussed. Our director was walking around asking staff to take off w/o pay because she had to cut her budget and she was determined to cut it because "nothing is going to stop me from getting my bonus." The place is in the RED, how do u justify having a reduction of work force but all management (including to CEO) taking home a 3 figure bonus?
Good gracious,talk about ballsy! I am amazed the director was so open about needing to cut the budget to ensure her bonus. Why on earth would she think staff would be willing to cut their own pay just to make sure she gets her bonus?
Nice letter but as it has been said, no administrator is going to give you a voice. You need to organize your coworkers to speak up and either join a union or form your own.
It's the only way to get them to listen to the people who do the work.
The people who built your hospital will have a contract and with it more power than those taking care of the sick inside.
Over the years, I've seen more and more management in hospitals. Each layer of management gets a salary -- usually far more than the bedside nurse makes -- and benefits plus a nice office with nice office furniture and artwork on the walls. The bedside nurse -- if she's lucky -- gets a locker in a crowded locker room. And perhaps a mailbox big enough for a folded paper or three. But the really sad, frustrating part is that with the addition of more and more management is the addition of more and more "Advance Practice Nurses". We have "Nurse Leaders" whose entire job seems to be going to meeting after meeting to discuss how the staff nurse can do more with less, how to educate the staff nurse on picking up this piece of someone else's job because that someone else "doesn't have the time" or "lacks staffing" to continue doing it, what additional "safety policy" can be put into place to prevent further errors like the one that occurred last week because the nurse who was trying to change the rate of a heparin drip was assaulted by a family member (who assumed she was decreasing the fentanyl drip) while she was doing so, how to educate the nurse on filling out the new paperwork that is being required because someone on the medical side wants to do another study and thinks it would be so much easier to just have the nurses fill out additional paperwork rather than have to mine the charts himself to find the (already charted) data he needs, or how to spin mandatory overtime because the department chose to hire two more "nurse leaders" instead of three staff nurses who might actually be able to do the job the "nurse leaders" are trying to tell everyone how to do. These "nurse leaders" also get a salary, benefits, an office, office furniture and art work.
So how do I get one of these nurse leader gigs?
Sort of kidding. On the rare days when a nurse leader gets put into staffing to do patient care, its a bad day for everyone. The huffs, the eyerolls, the being on their feet. They left the bedside for a reason! And we better be ready to take their patients because they WILL be leaving at 1600.
AuDDoc
102 Posts
In orientation at my current facility, we were told if a patient attacks us we are not allowed to defend ourselves and should just roll into a ball. If we defend ourselves we would be fired.
I laughed at the person giving the presentation and said "if someone attacks me they better have two beds waiting in the ER for me and the person who attacks me because at least one of us will need emergency medical care!"