I am a young nurse and have been working for almost two years. I was a clinic nurse at a community clinic for 8 mos. It is a messy big clinic where staff likes to play the blame game and full of office politics. With the change of a Health Care Manager in Feb 2013, a total of 9 medical support staff left the clinic since June 2013, 4 fired, 1 quit suddenly, and 4 left. It's like every month we had someone leaving.
The incident that precipitated my termination was this:
Pt saw family doc and I was ordered to send patient to ER to r/o appendicitis. The usual routine at the clinic for nurse is this: Doc comes and give report about pt. Nurse calls hospital ER, give report, give map if doc asks, nurse document and fax over any pertinent information to ER if asked. I gave the patient the map, explained that this is the address, and husband said "thank you." Spanish couple but doc said they speak English. I closed the door to give them privacy. About an hour later, I stood up to clock out and saw the husband open the door. I then asked "How come you and your wife have not left yet?" The doc overheard me and gave me an accusing look, "You let the patient waited for two hours?" I responded to her, "I gave them the map, and they said thank you, I don't know why they stayed in the room for two hrs." I knew she was upset and explained the same thing to her several minutes later. At the time I didn't know it was only 1 hr 10 mins, not 2 hr, as exaggerated by the doc. Every doc has a MA who is responsible for checking the rooms.
On that night, she wrote a risk report and I was terminated the next morning. They did the risk investigation and made up their mind without me.
I have to tell you my other mistakes that led up to this firing. I made one omission on charting and did not properly triage a patient asked by front desk because front desk always freak out and calls the nurse for every little thing. I was called to triage but quickly assessed the patient and said she could wait a couple days to see the doc. I did not document either. The lady later called and complained why she couldn't be seen that day. I had to tell the truth of what happened to my health center manager. I quickly called the patient like she asked and took care of the patient's problem. The health center manager seemed ok with that. I admit and own up to those mistakes.
When I got fired, they told me that I'm not a good fit for this company, I put the patient at risk, and because there were problems with my documentation and triage. I was never properly trained/ disciplined for my mistakes by my superior. When I was first hired, the health center manager and I were having a conversation and she said the company gives 3mos to see improvement, blah blah blah, but never gave me one. She was smiling to me in the beginning, and said she would mentor me, and it turned out, she was the one to fire me!
They let an MA trained for 3 days for her mistakes verses me, a nurse, fired after several mistakes. 2 nurses were let go before me.
Anyway, I have been crying and depressed since the firing, fixing my resume/ cover letter and hoping to start over. My nursing journey so far has been a rocky one and I wonder what I should do next.
I wrote a complaint letter, explained what happened, and asked to step down verses termination. The top guy has responded for a meeting (he's been with the company for 7mos), and I'm planning to see him tomorrow. Any advise on how I should talk to him? I think with my personality, I may end up saying how screwed up the company is.
