how do the "higher ups" show their support for their nurses???

[ohiogirlrn]

I am an RN in a suburban hospital. I work on a telemetry unit. I have been back in the hospital setting for about 15 months. I worked at an outpatient endoscopy center for 3 years and before that I worked on a med surg floor in a larger inner city hospital. Since returning to the hopsital setting I have noticed both suttle and very obvious differences. I realize the hospital settings are different but I feel that the differences go beyond that fact. I do not feel that my facility supports their nurses. The hospital is driven by the needs of the Physicians first, patients second and the staff a distant third. I want to state that I feel that my Nurse Manager is as supportive as the system will allow as are her immediate boss and the DON. The hospital has gotten into a rut where Nurses are very unit oriented and interaction between the units often results in pickering among fellow nurses. But the conflicts that arise between units are very often the result of decisions that evolved from demands of the Physicians; i.e. unexpected longer hours in specialty procedure units and no policy for recourse from the staff involving these issues. I am asking fellow Nurses if their facilities have any programs or policies in place that show support for their staff. Examples being; grievance boards, monthly achievment awards program, interaction committees between units with different scopes of practice, etc. I realize this has been a wordy post but felt it important to give the details to explain the type of information I am looking for. Thank you.:)

[P_RN, ADN, RN]

The stress at work is reflected down the line to the nurses. We are the "Nursing Service Line" and have a VP who IS NOT a nurse!

For Nurses Day, we got a shoestring that tied and this was supposed to be a badge holder!

We started having to pay for parking.

Our pay was frozen.

Our Shared Governance system was disbanded.

We all got anecdotal notes for EVERYTHING! All notices went in the "permanent record." (Like in Kindergarten.)

If we got a kind remark from a patient, we got a yellow piece of paper and a baloon; soon to be replaced with a system of brown plastic lapel pins. We tended to use them as thumb tacks, because tacks were no longer provided from supply.

Yep, a WHOLE LOT of support.

Oh and RESPECT too

P

[oramar]

I used to take care of telemetry overflow in ICU. Back then the ICU got to recover late ORs because the PAR closed at 6pm. I remember those recovery room nurses raging at the ICU nurses because they were slow to take the patients. Meanwhile the ICU nurses all had 2 or 3 patients a piece allready. It used to cause ugly fights. I remeber thinking what a shame. All the managment people who make the policies that lead to this strife are home at their dinner tables while these nurses tear each other to pieces. The problem was not with the recovery nurses who wanted to go home or the ICU nurses who were to busy to take the patients. It was totally the fault of greedy managment who would not allow budgeting for staffing in PAR after 6 or put an extra ICU nurse on know full well there were a lot of late ORs. Of course the nurses allowed to situation to continue for years without addressing the problem so there is blame there also.