Nurses week Cheap gifts from admin.

Nurses General Nursing

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So, with nurses week coming up, I was fondly remembering all the neat swag my employer has offered me as a token of their appreciation.

Over the last four years as a nurse I have received -

A calculator that broke in one week,

A fanny pack that was made out of sheet plastic,

A coupon for a free cookie from the cafeteria,

Shoelaces with the hospital logo,

A lunch bag made out of the same sheet plastic as the fanny pack,

And the only gift that was ever usefull, a badge holder like the drug reps give out where your badge is on a string with a spring.

so what kind of gifts does your institution pony up for?

There have to be some worse ones than mine.

We all know that a cheap trinket from our employer will ensure our future longevity with said institution. So what made you stay working where you are.

It's really unbelievable all the negativity here! I know some of

the things they have given you do sound pathetic, but a question

I have for you, is how many of you are involved on any committees that figure out what needs to be done? Alot of people like to complain about everything but it's always up to

SOMEBODY ELSE to take care of it. Get off your pitty pots and

start building some morale amongst your coworkers, and your

leaders and maybe some things will start happening for the good

of everyone. That's what I did--every little thing starts counting.

Originally posted by DAISY MAE 1

Get off your pitty pots and start building some morale amongst your coworkers.

Gee golly... I never thought of that.

My coworkers and I have wonderful morale. Hell, I just worked an awesome weekend. My coworkers and I had a great time, we really bonded with our Mother's Day patients (big deal on the post partum floor), we ordered lunch in, and didn't mind working a holiday weekend at all. Do you know why? Because our psycho bipolar supervisor that is chuck full of negativity wasn't there. We would never have a day like that with her there.

We got each other tokens of appreciation to show we appreciate each other for nurses week. This thread is about what kind of crappy gifts we got from management. Everyone here is perfectly ON topic.

So until the topic of this thread changes, I'm sitting pretty on my pity pot.

And by the way, I AM on the "how the hell are we gonna get this manager fired" committee.

:D Heather

I work in a long term care facility and what we got for nurses week was a lecture from a corporate nurse on how we do not document UTI's properly and we do not start I and O sheets properly and that this is Nursing 101 and her daughter who is going to be a nurse is going to learn about all that in her first few months of school! Like that is what the real problem is! Then the rest of the meeting was about how wonderful the treatment nurse is. This is the same one who sits on her *** and does not do anything except complain about all the other nurses! After that is when we got the trinkets. I am glad to be going back into teaching!

Oh Heather, YOU GO GIRL!!!! :lol2:

Specializes in Hospice and palliative care.

Boy, I haven't seen so many heated opinions since Nursedude used to post here! :p My feeling is that I would rather be treated well 24/7/365 rather than during ONE week in May where we get small "tokens" of management's SUPPOSED appreciation. I don't want to lump all managers/VP's/DON's/CNO's together---I realize that some of them are truly concerned about their staffs and the shortage, etc and try to do right by them. But there are others who don't give a rat's **** about the nurses who work for them. It will always be like that, and all we can hope is that those who DO value their nurses will mentor others with the same mindset and encourage them to assume leadership roles.

I personally choose not to accept the little "tokens" because it offends me that management tries to pretend like they care about us for one week a year--what about the other 51 weeks? I'm with those who said they would rather have better pay and better staffing all the time--that would be a much more valued gift than all the mugs, bags, etc that are proffered to many of us on a yearly basis.

For the poster who suggested we get involved in hospital committees---I would love to, but at my facility, nurses aren't invited to be involved in that many committees. The only committee that nurses are really involved in (that I'm aware of) is the retention/recruitment committee, which I am not on (I'm only per diem; a full-timer was appointed to the committee). Even if I were full-time, I doubt that my current manager would pick me to represent our unit on ANY committee (I have a nice cushy spot right at the top of his s*** list! :roll :chuckle). As it is, I'm quite happy--I'm seven months away from an MSN and work per diem. I try to give some time to the unit but honestly, school is my numero uno priority, and i'm in the position where I can make school number one. I make few apologies for the fact that I don't give as freely of my time as I could. I did clinicals this past spring, and the time required for outside assignments was substantial; this will continue for the whole summer. Until management takes serious steps to improve the working climate in our ICU's, tele units, ER's, nurseries, L & D suites and OR's, we will continue to hemorrhage nurses out the wazoo. It's that simple. We need to raise our voices and be vocal. I highly recommend reading "From Silence to Voice" by Suzanne Gordon and Bernice Buresh. I'm still early in the book (just started it last week). I think this should be required reading for all incoming nursing students, regardless of whether they are associate degree, diploma, or BSN students. We need to heal the divisions in our profession and present a united front. We need to be proactive, not reactive, in formulating solutions to the problems we are facing. Patients aren't as trusting of hospitals and healthcare anymore, and if we don't let our voices be heard loud and clear....well, I don't want to think about what kinds of consequences we may face.

OK, I'll shut up now and go to bed! :zzzzz

Laurie

Here is another one for nothing. At the last staff meeting we were tasked with ways to cut costs, I guess this was one of them.

OLA.gif

bob

bob, your smiley guys are awesome!!!! :smokin:

Specializes in LTC/Peds/ICU/PACU/CDI.

:o please! :saint:

originally posted by 2ndcareerrn

here is another one for nothing. at the last staff meeting we were tasked with ways to cut costs, i guess this was one of them.

ola.gif

bob

I got a cheap little fridge magnet. The administration also held a drew consisiting of about half a dozen prizes, which they got for free from supplier reps. Oh and they also further diluted the "honor" by deciding to call it "nursing week" so that it also lumped in clerk and support staff. Apparently we're interchangeable.

-Ad

Specializes in NICU, Infection Control.

ATTENTION BRIAN!!!

Can we have these smileys?? Thanks

sorry Klarern, i have to agree with Steveirae, you have got that nm doublespeak down!!!!! This is my favorite nurse week story; an administrator pushed a cart around with hospital juice and stale cookies, and complained to me that he had gotten to the hospital at 0730 that day and it was almost 1800 so he had actually been at the hospital for almost 11 hours!!!! and he had the nerve to gripe to me!!! i lost it. i really should have been fired for what i said to this idiot and how i said it.he slunk out of the er and did'nt come back for months. then i went to a new er to work, administration gave us stupid crap for nurses week, but our er docs bought us all great gifts, and donated $3000.00 for er nurses education fund so we could all get our CEN,TNCC and ACLS. they also always gave us a great Christmas party every year ( sit down dinner, open bar, dancing, live band at a really nice hotel) our ER DOCS are the best!!! they also treat us like professionals. too bad they aren't hosp administrators..........

A free lunch ticket, even to the hospital cafe, would be nicer than plastic things you throw away. Or maybe a gift cert. to the gift shop (ours is great), or a discount on gifts you choose yourself from a designated list. Our hosp.does a Texas BBQ which is nice but I miss them sometimes due to scheduling, staffing, etc. We got a "Dilbert" gift one year: T-shirt with hospital logo and a note reminding you that hospital policy prohibits wearing T-shirts on duty. Made a great rag to wash cars.

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