Have you ever been fired from a nursing job?

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Specializes in Critical Care/Teaching.

Just curious to see how many nurses have been fired from nursing jobs? At my place of employment, a new management team is cracking down and firing nurses left and right. 4 nurses since October 1st!!

Brandie

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Specializes in ICU hopeful!.

Just curious...what kind of things do nurses get fired for? Medication/medical errors? Not being "courteous" enough? Attendance? Lack of knowledge. I am doing pre-reqs right now and I was just curious. :)

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Specializes in Medical Surgical.

I've seen this before. Usually get them on calling in sick and being late too often.

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Witnessing elder abuse performed by the nurse who was the supplier of controlled medications to the DON. Stands to reason that anyone who witnesses the DON's pet abuse a resident, that they would be fired and not the abuser, whether or not the pet were providing the DON with the medications she was stealing from the facility.

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Hospital administration goes on a witch hunt every 6 months!!! and get away with it and nobody tallks about it! they need to have some class action lawsuits that;ll stop the abuse!! terminated 5 nurses where i work , all within 3 months time!

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Specializes in home health, dialysis, others.

I was fired for speaking up at a meeting about abuse of the nursing staff. I was a home health nurse. and the admin kept dumping more and more clerical stuff on the nursing staff. I spoke up and objected. The admin spent the next 7 weeks gathering up an amazing array of minutiae until they had enough to fire me.

My immediate supervisor cried while firing me, the HR manager told me I could come back if the present management ever left. This is a small town, and finding new employment has been difficult.

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Specializes in Neuroscience/Neuro-surgery/Med-Surgical/.

Yes, there have been 4 or 5 RNs recently fired on a particular floor that has a new manager.

These were RNs with 10+ years of experience. Fired for a variety of reasons.

I believe the manager was hired to 'clean house'.

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"he who comes to equity comes with clean hands" only god knows? but, my question is, is it wrong to say the truth? why must we judge other without being just? what is the meaning of justice? why must we eradicate people from work where they make their living just because of justice or the truth? i wonder why? remember, all cases go back to our creator for judges. this is a small world, what goes around comes around. we must not say that we have all the power in the world today to discard people from their working place just because we are in power all because they say the truth. but, the nurses too must take note too of their duties not to violate the rules and regulations of the working environment. and, the authority concerned must be just. i believe, if one is being disappointed just because of the truth, the creator who create everyone of us will find such a person a means to fulfill his / her obligations in life and he will elevate the person concerned. so, my dear friends take heart the best is on the way. it is a lesson for us to learn and for us to see how the creatures of god behaves individually. thank you. this is my little contributions. god knows best god bless nurses....great nurses!

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Specializes in EC, IMU, LTAC.

I've been fired twice:

1) A CNA didn't like me, so she smeared me. She told administration that I had grabbed her breasts (absolute lies, she would talk in great detail about her sex life regularly), and told all the African-American staff that I was racist (another nurse showed me racist text messages that the CNA had sent, on company time no less). I was fired as a diplomatic move, as there that CNA had ensured that there were people out for my blood. Everyone (maybe except administration) knew that she was a liar, a glass-house-dweller throwing stones, and a shrew, but like I said, it was diplomatic to fire me. That was about the same time they got new management and cleaned house. Many migrated to other jobs due to the new management anyway, so it was easier to explain to future jobs why I had gotten fired. By the way, the CNA later got fired for getting in a fight with another CNA, the classy broad.

2) The floor's nurse manager was fired, and the Ronald Reagan of nurse managers came in. Many of the people hired under the old manager were fired over trivial matters. One was fired for a one time no call no show which was probably due to the old manager's tendency to change the schedule or accidentally schedule one nurse for the entire floor. A CNA was fired, the reason they told her was because she didn't have a high school diploma. I was fired because my Pyxis record was audited after I admitted to losing a drug before I could waste it, and they found some incidents of me not giving the drug within 15 minutes after it was pulled (times got busy and emergencies happened, and the drugs were scanned in with bar code), and 2 isolated incidents of forgetting to waste excess. I don't pull without wasting anymore, and will sadly leave patients in pain because I'm not going to get caught up in JCAHO Witch Hunt.

Even the best of nurses will get fired. I know one who was fired because a unit secretary passive-aggressively refused to fill out or notify a certain nurse's orders. There will always be people who will not like you, there will always be stupid rules that go against humanity, and there will always be new regimes. Sadly, the biggest thing for getting fired is calling attention to yourself. It's easier to fire the one making waves than actually do something about the problem.

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Specializes in EC, IMU, LTAC.

Addendum: If a place of employment wants to get rid of you, they will find a reason. In this economy, they're trimming down considerably and don't want to have to give severance packages. With nursing, they can usually find a really darned serious reason despite mitigating circumstances, and report you to the Board to cover their own butts and make it look like they're taking the rules seriously. This is my third job in my first year of nursing, and I'm trying to hold on long enough to not look bad for my next jobs. I've learned the corporate game, the honesty will get you into trouble, and that no good deed goes unpunished. Sad, but that's how the world works, and I need to preserve my own butt to survive in the world and not get myself reported or blacklisted.

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Specializes in Psych ICU, addictions.
Just curious...what kind of things do nurses get fired for? Medication/medical errors? Not being "courteous" enough? Attendance? Lack of knowledge. I am doing pre-reqs right now and I was just curious. :)

I've never been fired...yet.

What I've seen nurses be fired for are medical errors (either accumulating lots of little ones or making a "biggie"), attendance issues, negligence/malpractice, budget cuts, too many documentation deficiencies, diversion of drugs, and sadly enough, "witch hunts."

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Specializes in CVICU.

Well, my unit is currently doing the "witch hunt," it seems. Meanwhile, they let the worst, laziest, and error prone nurses linger on. I just hope that I'm not going to be one of the "witches!"

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