Write-Ups & Disciplinary Action

Nurses General Nursing

Published

Has anyone ever been written-up or suspended by their place of employment?

I received my first write-up today after nine months on the job. I am the type of person who can accept full responsibility for my wrongdoings; however, the disciplinary process is still so very depressing and humorless.

Thanks for listening.

Specializes in Community Health, Med-Surg, Home Health.
You hit the nail directly on the head. The 2 coworkers who told on me are the facility gossips.

I can readily admit that my actions went against company policy, but I don't think they warranted a punishment as austere as a final written warning before I'm terminated. After all, my personnel file was completely clean prior to this final written warning, with no previous write-ups or disciplinary action of any sort.

NOW...I am PISSED!!!:angryfire :angryfire :angryfire :angryfire :angryfire

I have seen nurses do much worse, and get promoted, yet, to say that this is a FINAL written warning before you are terminated is an OUTRAGE! I suspect that these back stabbing people were envious of you and wanted to make life hard. I think that you mentioned that you worked another job. Would you consider leaving to pursue the other one more behind this? I mean, really...I have seen RNs that placed a foley catheter into a male, met resistance, and still keep pushing...then the patient needed packed red blood cells because of the enormous loss of blood loss. The woman did this twice within a short period (weeks), and she didn't even get written up!! I guess that if she checked the internet, she would get her just reward??? How INSANE!!

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Specializes in OB, M/S, HH, Medical Imaging RN.

I likewise accept responsibility for my mistakes and if I realize I've made one I will contact the NM, the doctor, and write myself up. It's happened 2 or 3 times in the past 31 years. I'm made more than 2 or 3 mistakes of course but the ones I reported were those I thought were potentially dangerous. Nothing happened, Praise God. The others were remedied or ok'd by the doctor and an order was changed. I think reporting myself helps from getting written up.

I almost got written up at the HH agency I worked for last year. They decided that even though the patients were signing our NN notes they wanted more proof that we had made the visit. They wanted us to call in and have the pt talk to a person in the office so she could note it, and then we were supposed to get it approved by the DON. Well, that went over like a sack of rocks with me. I went to the owner and I told her that I was a professional woman who takes pride in my job and taking good care of my patients. I told her that if I didn't see my patients they'd be calling the office asking where I was. I could never do that to a patient and could never take money from the company that I hadn't earned. I told her if she expected me to add this one more task to my already overbooked schedule and if she thought I would steal from the company then she should just go ahead and fire me on the spot. She said nothing. I then talked to the DON and told her I refused to participate in that nonsense. She said she didn't blame me. She said the owner had told her to write me up for insolence but she told the owner that I was right and had not said anything that was out of line. Woo Hoo! I did quit a couple of months later. That agency was a real joke.

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After nearly five years at the same facility I received two write-ups within the space of a few weeks. One I admit I totally deserved; I tried to transfer a resident incorrectly and ended up having to ease them to the floor. I was written up for failure to follow proper procedure.

A lot of other CNAs were telling me I should fight it but I said why? I didn't look at the patient's ADL flowsheet beforehand--if I had, like I should've, I would have seen that the resident's transfer status had changed since the last time I cared for them. I made an assumption, I screwed up and I admitted it. I was quite upset when I got it but I moved on and learned from it.

The other one I guess I deserved but I feel a little more bitter about it. I have intermittent back problems that were caused by working at this facility, in addition to arthritis that I had before but has been worsened by the nature of the work. We had a couple weeks where it rained nearly every day and I was in a lot of pain. One day it was really bad so I called in sick. Not long after that I got written up (first warning) for calling in too many times.

The attendance policy states you'll be written up for calling in three times in ninety days and technically I did, but the first two were within a few days of each other and the third one wasn't until eighty days later. I thought about going to management and trying to argue it but since I haven't seen the doctor about my back or arthritis in months (and I didn't see him that day) I don't have any documentation to back me up.

The attendance one will be dismissed from my record if I don't call in at all for ninety days (and now I'm paranoid about getting sick or my car breaking down or something) but the other one is on my record for good.

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Specializes in Med/Surge, Psych, LTC, Home Health.

The last place that I worked, I did not have a single writeup in 6.5 years of employment. Then we got a new nurse manager on my floor, and I received two within a span of a couple of months. The first one I didn't deserve and I actually got torn up and thrown away. The second one I probably did deserve because it involved a patient that was in my care at the time of the incident; however I wasn't the one who was present in the room of the patient at the time of the infraction.

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Specializes in Hospice, Med/Surg, ICU, ER.

I graduate from LPN school in two weeks, but I currently work as a MA at an Urgent Care clinic. I've been there 7 months and have had two diciplinary writeups (to go along with 10 or so customer and coworker commendations).

The first was d/t failing to notice a critical value on a returned lab test. This happened early in my second month of employment, and nobody had ever said that my duties included review of lab results - I thought I was just supposed to marry them with the pt's chart and leave them for the MD. The pt was OK, and the writeup was pure keester-covering on the part of the management that had a gaping hole in their vaunted "system". Not fair, but I did learn from it. NOW, I review EVERY lab result that comes back while I'm on duty for critical values. I was told that I should be able to recognise critical lab values and stat them to the MD. OK then.....

The second writeup just occurred about three weeks ago. In this case, I triaged a pt. on the weekend when our regular MDs were off duty (and the w/e doc was well known to cut corners). He was in for a shoulder problem. At the end of the H&P session, I asked if he "had any other sx the MD needed to be aware of"? Yes, the hand of the affected arm felt cold. COLD! Ok.... I did a visual comparison of the two hands and one was, sure enough, pale when the other was wnl. OK.... so... I check bilat radial pulses, and sure enough, the affected extremity was 1+ intensity when the other was 3+. I documented the appearance of the hand and my assessment of the bilat pulses. OK fine. The pt was referred to a vascular specialist at our affiliated hospital and all ended well, or so I thought.

Monday, the regular Doc,and Med Director for our facility (a jackazz by any objective standard) came in and was reviewing charts from the weekend. When he came to this pt's chart and saw my documentation, he went nuts! Yelling at me in the hallway, saying that "you have neither the training or knowledge to make such an assessment", etc. Well maybe I didn't handle this very well, but I told him that times have changed and nurses are required by statute to do physical assessments and document objective data; that one of the first things taught in nursing school these days was physical assessments, and that if I was supposed to have knowledge of critical lab values (see the first writeup, which I'm sure he was the butt-coverer-in-chief on) it could be presumed that I could tell if a hand was cold and that two pulses had differing intensities! His statement was to the effect of "you are not a nurse yet and you work under my license now". And my reply was "Wrong again, Doctor. I work under the license of the MD on duty at the time. You weren't here."

I thought the subject was closed, but.... guess again. The next day I walked in to work to be met by my immediate supervisor with a writeup. Dr. Jackazz had insisted that I be written up for "overstepping my scope of practice" when in reality (and everyone else who works there knows it) it was because I had the gall to face-off with him. Anyway, I didn't sign the writeup, and insisted on a meeting with the VP for Clinic Operations, the corporate head of all the hospital's satellite clinics. Once my record was reviewed and my side of the story was presented, the writeup went into the trash.

Do I have to say that when I DO have a license to protect, I won't be working at THIS Urgent Care?

I pity the fool that thinks he/she is going to "eat me for lunch" and I could care less what initials follow their name.

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I used to work as an aide in a hospital where night shift used to always write up day shift. It was like ... every time you walked in the next morning, you wondered who night shift would write up next. I guess they didn't have anything better to do.

I got written up one day when I had a really bad run ... 13 patients, four total cares, six others with non-stop diarrhea. There's no doubt that the run was a mess when night shift took over but, there was absolutely nothing I could do about it with that kind of patient load.

Some patient supposedly complained I refused to change the sheets on her bed and that her husband had to do it. Only problem was ... the linen was in a room with a code key that no patient had access to so, how did the husband get the linen to change the bed since I supposedly refused to do it.

I had enough. I was in RN school and didn't need to take that crap so ... I quit the next day. If that's how they want to treat people, they can take the job and shove it.

:typing

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I am not a nurse yet, but in my past corporate experience, I found that CEOs and top managers who described the company environment as "we are all family here" were also the first to manipulate, be unsupportive, and unceremoniously lay people off like they were taking out the trash at the end of the week.

I call it the "F" word ...

When they start talking "Family" ... you KNOW that most of the time, the place is going to be a cut throat hellhole

Run for the hills !!!

:chuckle

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Specializes in cardiac med-surg.

it helps me to sleep soundly at night knowing that there are those in the world ever so quick to illuminate our horrifying mistakes to the rest of the world, those that live in a house of glass...

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Quite frankly, this is one of the reasons I'll never work for a non-union hospitals. They can't get away with this crap so easily at a union hospital.

:typing

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I got written up when we got a new nurse manager...never have had a written warning at this job, and then she leaves and the acting manager is reviewing all those written warnings and downgrading them to verbal warnings....very strange situation.

M

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Please tell me that your boss tore up the writeup when she realized you weren't even at work when you allegedly offended.

Yeah ... I'd really like to hear this story as well.

:typing

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I graduate from LPN school in two weeks, but I currently work as a MA at an Urgent Care clinic. I've been there 7 months and have had two diciplinary writeups (to go along with 10 or so customer and coworker commendations).

The first was d/t failing to notice a critical value on a returned lab test. This happened early in my second month of employment, and nobody had ever said that my duties included review of lab results - I thought I was just supposed to marry them with the pt's chart and leave them for the MD. The pt was OK, and the writeup was pure keester-covering on the part of the management that had a gaping hole in their vaunted "system". Not fair, but I did learn from it. NOW, I review EVERY lab result that comes back while I'm on duty for critical values. I was told that I should be able to recognise critical lab values and stat them to the MD. OK then.....

The second writeup just occurred about three weeks ago. In this case, I triaged a pt. on the weekend when our regular MDs were off duty (and the w/e doc was well known to cut corners). He was in for a shoulder problem. At the end of the H&P session, I asked if he "had any other sx the MD needed to be aware of"? Yes, the hand of the affected arm felt cold. COLD! Ok.... I did a visual comparison of the two hands and one was, sure enough, pale when the other was wnl. OK.... so... I check bilat radial pulses, and sure enough, the affected extremity was 1+ intensity when the other was 3+. I documented the appearance of the hand and my assessment of the bilat pulses. OK fine. The pt was referred to a vascular specialist at our affiliated hospital and all ended well, or so I thought.

Monday, the regular Doc,and Med Director for our facility (a jackazz by any objective standard) came in and was reviewing charts from the weekend. When he came to this pt's chart and saw my documentation, he went nuts! Yelling at me in the hallway, saying that "you have neither the training or knowledge to make such an assessment", etc. Well maybe I didn't handle this very well, but I told him that times have changed and nurses are required by statute to do physical assessments and document objective data; that one of the first things taught in nursing school these days was physical assessments, and that if I was supposed to have knowledge of critical lab values (see the first writeup, which I'm sure he was the butt-coverer-in-chief on) it could be presumed that I could tell if a hand was cold and that two pulses had differing intensities! His statement was to the effect of "you are not a nurse yet and you work under my license now". And my reply was "Wrong again, Doctor. I work under the license of the MD on duty at the time. You weren't here."

I thought the subject was closed, but.... guess again. The next day I walked in to work to be met by my immediate supervisor with a writeup. Dr. Jackazz had insisted that I be written up for "overstepping my scope of practice" when in reality (and everyone else who works there knows it) it was because I had the gall to face-off with him. Anyway, I didn't sign the writeup, and insisted on a meeting with the VP for Clinic Operations, the corporate head of all the hospital's satellite clinics. Once my record was reviewed and my side of the story was presented, the writeup went into the trash.

Do I have to say that when I DO have a license to protect, I won't be working at THIS Urgent Care?

I pity the fool that thinks he/she is going to "eat me for lunch" and I could care less what initials follow their name.

Right on, Sister! Just please tell me you immediately notified a physician about the patient's condition (neurovascular compromiste) and did not merely document it.

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