Baffled.

[SilenceintheLibrary]

So fair warning, this is probably going to be completely unproductive and may provoke the RN vs LPN debate. I'm really not trying to start anything, I'm just honestly at a loss about this situation. I work in a clinic that has a couple of awesome RNs who do great work and whose jobs I would not ever want to do. But there are also a couple other RNs here whose lack of common sense is just staggering. I am constantly fixing their mistakes. And I could understand if these were just slip-ups or they were busy, but that is not the case. They are either lazy so they're pretending to be stupid, or they're really just completely incompetent. I'm not sure which. The worst part is when I explain to them why they're wrong, they get upset and go to my supervisor. I've just explained to you why what you want to do makes absolutely no sense, and told you how to do it the right way, but you're so bull-headed you try to go around me instead. I've gone to my higher ups a few times when I was just too overwhelmed by it all, but nothing ever comes of it. It's hard to get fired here, they're more likely to just give your work to someone else if you won't do it. I'm just exhausted from running around trying to fix things. Today was so bad I actually cried from sheer exhaustion and frustration. The funny part is, these RNs have made comments about me being only an LPN, and said that I didn't have the critical thinking skills necessary to do their jobs. I'm tired. I can't get the higher ups to fix the situation, and I can't get these RNs to realize their mistakes, but I can't keep taking on everyone else's job. I know I should go to school and get my RN. Especially since some of my frustration stems from knowing that despite their ineptitude they are making more than I do. I also know I should look for another job. But I love my patients and I'd feel like an ass abandoning them to these idiots. I don't see a fix for this, and I'm not sure any advice will help, but I needed to blow off a little of this steam so here it is. Thanks for listening.

P.S. Please don't ask me what the mistakes are, I can't explain it without making it obvious where I work and I don't want these RNs seeing this or hearing about it. They already know how I feel, but I've had enough of getting in trouble just because they're offended.

[canoehead, BSN, RN]

You've educated them, then gone to the boss with your issues, and no one has changed. I recommend just relaxing and let them do it wrong, unless a patient is going to be directly and immediately harmed. Let them deal with the extra work of having to do things over.

[SpankedInPittsburgh, DNP, RN]

Yeah this isn't an RN versus LPN controversy at all. It's not even about a conversation about working with lazy bums who don't take care of their patients. Its about two concepts that elude most nurses (me included) and cause untold misery. Acceptance and lack of borders / codependence.

Acceptance is not just saying "this is the way it is so screw it". You're a nurse and you are expected to take care of the patients in your charge and to notice and attempt to make changes to unacceptable working conditions. You have done that and it sounds like has and / or will not change. Accept that fact. Either keep going to work there and doing the best you can for your patients in your charge or get out. Its really that simple. You don't have the power to effectuate systemic change there but you can still give excellent care to the patients you care for. That's all you can do. Being frustrated, angry, or whatever and bringing this misery home to damage familial relations is helping nothing so stop that.

Codependence. It is not your job to care for every patient or fix every bad situation where you work. When you take care of other nurses responsibilities it lets them off the hook and I'm quite sure they are more than happy to watch you do everything that needs done while they sit on their collective butts. You doing this doesn't help your organization in any way. You are enabling bad practices and management could care less because the work (more or less) is getting done and on paper they are fully staffed. The only way these nurses are going to work is if there are ramifications for their laziness. Don't do their work for them!!! If the work doesn't get done patients & providers are going to start to complain and they probably have more influence than you so perhaps an actual change may occur.

If the place is an unacceptable environment it is your responsibility to leave. Nurses accept the unacceptable way too much and then they are miserable. Misery is contagious and spreads to loved ones and coworkers. If you are not happy where you are at leave but please don't do what many nurses do which is stay in a bad situation and moan about it because its your decision to be there & your responsibility to take care of the happiness in your life. Misery is a choice

[BCgradnurse, MSN, RN, NP]

Agree with Pittsburgh. This is a clear case of "Those than can, do. Those that can't (or won't), don't have to." Back off and stop taking it on all on yourself. If you can't, then it's time to leave.

[Oldmahubbard]

You work in an outpatient clinic as an LPN, where you believe some RNs are not doing a good job.

It is such an unusual place that you can't give us any examples of the mistakes, because the employer would be recognized.

You have notified management, they have done nothing, yet you still feel compelled to cover up someone else's terrible mistakes.

This is not in any way an LPN vs RN situation. It is an interpersonal issue.

I say this as an NP who has been happy to learn various things from LPN's.

I don't think you mentioned how long this has been going on, or how many years of experience you have.

Have you heard of co-dependency? I hate to even use the term, but I find no other explanation.

If the job is otherwise ok, you should stay and just mind your own damn business.

If you decide to leave, the place up the road is likely to be exactly the same.

[Mavrick, BSN, RN]

Yeah this isn't an RN versus LPN controversy at all. It's not even about a conversation about working with lazy bums who don't take care of their patients. Its about two concepts that elude most nurses (me included) and cause untold misery. Acceptance and lack of borders / codependence.

Acceptance is not just saying "this is the way it is so screw it". You're a nurse and you are expected to take care of the patients in your charge and to notice and attempt to make changes to unacceptable working conditions. You have done that and it sounds like has and / or will not change. Accept that fact. Either keep going to work there and doing the best you can for your patients in your charge or get out. Its really that simple. You don't have the power to effectuate systemic change there but you can still give excellent care to the patients you care for. That's all you can do. Being frustrated, angry, or whatever and bringing this misery home to damage familial relations is helping nothing so stop that.

Codependence. It is not your job to care for every patient or fix every bad situation where you work. When you take care of other nurses responsibilities it lets them off the hook and I'm quite sure they are more than happy to watch you do everything that needs done while they sit on their collective butts. You doing this doesn't help your organization in any way. You are enabling bad practices and management could care less because the work (more or less) is getting done and on paper they are fully staffed. The only way these nurses are going to work is if there are ramifications for their laziness. Don't do their work for them!!! If the work doesn't get done patients & providers are going to start to complain and they probably have more influence than you so perhaps an actual change may occur.

If the place is an unacceptable environment it is your responsibility to leave. Nurses accept the unacceptable way too much and then they are miserable. Misery is contagious and spreads to loved ones and coworkers. If you are not happy where you are at leave but please don't do what many nurses do which is stay in a bad situation and moan about it because its your decision to be there & your responsibility to take care of the happiness in your life. Misery is a choice

Excellent post. You had me at "effectuate".

[angeloublue22, BSN, RN]

When I used to be an LPN, I worked with a similar group. I finally had to take some advice and take a step back and let go which actually took everything I had because I pride myself on good work ethic. I'm also a little type-A. I decided to only do my job and stop trying so hard to fix what other people do unless it effects my patients like a mistake in notating an order. It took a huge amount of stress off or me. After I stopped making up for other people, our supervisors finally figured out who was doing what or NOT doing what. I learned that if you are making up for others, supervisors only care if the job got done so in a way you are assisting them in their behavior. Once supervisors realize that the work is not getting done or properly, they will seek the person who was supposed to do said job and then hopefully address it.

[AceOfHearts<3]

Sometimes you just need to vent. I have a group chat with a few friends from my career prior to nursing. We vent about family issues (mainly in-laws), our jobs, etc. They aren't in nursing, but they ask questions and still make me feel better when I'm upset about work. We do a lot more than vent, but man it can be so therapeutic to just let it all out. There have been times when I've been at work and unable to read or respond to messages and when I leave I've had 150+ messages on my phone because the other 3 have had a whole conversation without me (it's happened to everyone in the group text before and we all just laugh).

[AutumnApple]

Hmph.

I started to leave this alone, but lets go there. No one else has mentioned this so I want to bring a new perspective to this all.

I have had to mediate more than my share of employee on employee wrestling matches. While having to do so, I always operated knowing full well that no matter how hard I try, I'm never going to get the truth of what was going on out on the floor. How things are reported and the truth of the matter tend not to be identical twins. In fact, most of the time, they're barely even cousins. With all that said, we only have your side of things.

So, that must be taken into consideration. But that's not my only problem here. It's been my experience that when people claim to be the one doing "all" the work and the one who is correcting everyone else's mistakes........well, again.......the truth of the matter and how they are reported aren't identical.

Some examples of what employees said to me, and what the reality was:

* "I'm sick and tired of having to go behind everyone and clean up the place. It's unsafe how they leave the place sometimes." Some nurses weren't tightening the water faucet handle hard enough and the water was dripping at a rate of, oh, about 3 or 5 gtts a minute. No harm came of it, this person was just OCD about the dripping. That faucet just did that unless you shut it off with, well.....you practically needed a wrench to close it enough for no dripping.

* "I am not the only one here who can care for the difficult patients, it's time for others to carry their weight." Her issue was that she had two isolation patients, everyone else had one or none. Reason for this was, it was block assignments and every other block she could have taken had a patient on it that had fired her. She was insanely jaded, every single patient on pain meds was a drug seeker. This M/s unit took a lot of ortho overflow, so there were people with broken hips and such. Being that she was slow about covering pain, she got refused by a lot of patients.

* "Day shift can't do a competent shift hand off report. They're rushed and leave out important details." This one caused me to do some investigation. I watched shift hand off more closely, even sat in on two of them. Yes, she was correct. Report was rushed and condensed. Never mind the reason it was rushed was because this nurse was one of those who loved walking around the unit for nearly twenty minutes after punching in trying to find everything and anything daylight missed. Then she'd show up for report and get 30 min. worth of info in ten minutes. This facility came down hard on nurses who punched out late so......what else were they to do? Well, they didn't have to do anything, I resolved the problem. That's another story.

So, having many experiences (there are hundreds more I could share) like this make me skeptical of someone who claims to be fixing everyone else's mistakes. Despite being the only one pulling the cart, management neither recognizes the problem nor takes any action when informed of it, and both nurses have no defense for what is going on other than to insult you about your degree. Can you see why I feel like major, pertinent details are missing?

No need to answer these question but, they're floating around in my head:

1. Are you really fixing "mistakes"? Or are you like the nurse in the dripping faucet example above?

2. Are you really fixing mistakes or, is it just a matter of you want things done one way, them another and neither way is necessarily wrong?

3. Are you really the only competent person in the building? Because that's how you make it sound. If so, what sort of care are people receiving and if it's that bad..........why not reporting it to someone who can fix it? I mean, really....kudos to you for playing the hero and fixing all those mistakes but.....what good are you doing the patients if the place has gone down hill so far and you just leave it unreported? Or are the mistakes......not reportable (you won't list them here so......)?

4. I've never bought "I love my patients" as a reason for staying after someone states their work facility is toxic. That seems more like a reason to leave to me. If it's so toxic, it must be hard seeing them rely on said facility for care. So why not moving on?

Maybe it's just me posting at night when I shouldn't again but, I just smell too much selectiveness in what parts of the story we're being told.

[SpankedInPittsburgh, DNP, RN]

Yeah I've been in a position at work to mediate many disputes over the years and usually all the individuals version of the "truth" bears little resemblance to the actual objective truth.

[Alex_RN, BSN]

I think you and I are both in the US, so this applies. I tell people, or myself, that there are more than 3 million licensed RNs in the US. There are going to be some terrible ones, often working right alongside me.

[Oldmahubbard]

I think you and I are both in the US, so this applies. I tell people, or myself, that there are more than 3 million licensed RNs in the US. There are going to be some terrible ones, often working right alongside me.

Apart from drugs and alcohol, there will be some that have real personality issues that interfere with their job.

So we have to decide how terrible they really are, and is it worth it to leave an otherwise good job?

[wondern, ASN]

Maybe you could use it as a teaching opportunity.