Good nurse vs. bad nurse

[Sassybottom]

Hey,

I normally work the night shift and will occasionally pick up a day shift or two. Anyway, I overheard one of the patient care coordinators totally bashing on another nurse and saying how she was lazy and was the worst nurse of them all ... whoah ...

Anyway, I was just wondering how this patient care coordinator would come to this conclusion. The patient care coordinator doesn't work with this nurse at all. As a nurse I can determine who the good CNAs are and who are the lazy ones because I work directly with them but not nurses on other shifts.

How would this patient care coordinator know? I know the shift I work on is pretty tight knit.

[Sassybottom]

Oh, and if you are branded as a "bad" and "lazy" nurse, does this information get back to your manager? Are patient care coordinators or charge nurses expected to talk to the managers about a nurse's performance?

[Nightcrawler, BSN, RN]

I am sure that there are nurses on the other shift of all of our units that we dread taking report from. The rooms are a mess, the meds aren't signed off, and the condition that the patient is in rarely has any relationship to the condition that they told you they were in. You then spend the first hour of your shift cleaning up the mess they left, giving pain meds to get pain back under control, and calling docs to give updates on patient conditions.

I don't know what role a patient care coordinator has at your facility, so I can't comment on how they would know, but CNA's can usually tell something from the condition of the room, whether the incontinent patient has been changed or cleaned, etc.

[rita359]

Hey,

I normally work the night shift and will occasionally pick up a day shift or two. Anyway, I overheard one of the patient care coordinators totally bashing on another nurse and saying how she was lazy and was the worst nurse of them all ... whoah ...

Anyway, I was just wondering how this patient care coordinator would come to this conclusion. The patient care coordinator doesn't work with this nurse at all. As a nurse I can determine who the good CNAs are and who are the lazy ones because I work directly with them but not nurses on other shifts.

How would this patient care coordinator know? I know the shift I work on is pretty tight knit.

Actually, our care coordinators work pretty closely with the nurses especially nurses on day shift. They may not know assessment skills, med knowledge but they would know whether the nurse has a handle on what was going on with that pt plan wise and where the pt was regarding projected length of stay or what was delaying discharge. They may make a judgement about a nurse to another coordinator from their perspective.

[llg, PhD, RN]

I don't know the exact role of a "patient care coordinator" role on your unit, but it sounds like a role with some responisibility. Charge nurses, etc. are supposed to know the abilities, work habits, and knowledge level of the people whose work they are overseeing. It's their job to know so that they can fun the shift (or the unit) well. Yes, they talk to each other, share information and their assessments of the staff with each other. Over time, they get good at collecting bits of information about the performance of the staff and making judgments about them. That's part of their job.