Horrible Charge Nurse

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Specializes in Med-Surg.

So on my floor, we have 2 charge nurses, are budgeted for one, and so they work three 12's a week. One works Mon-Tues-Wed, the other Wed-Thurs-Fri, and then that one comes back to work the next Mon-Tues-Wed, then has like 8 days off. Then they are only free from 7-3, then pick up patients from 3-7, causing a regular nurse to be pulled to another floor (it's miserable). I like one of the charges, but only maybe one nurse can stand to work with the other. Another nurse actually quit because this particular person got the charge nurse position. She is going back to school to get her BSN, and literally calls people on other floors the whole shift to get help with paper writing, has printed at least an entire pack of paper worth of material that is school related at work, will shove her school work in front of you while you're trying to chart to ask for help, has actually complained to patients and their families about needing to work on her papers, and has openly talked about hiring people to write a paper or two for her, and continues to claim how 'honest' she is and how hard she is working on getting her degree. She then neglects her charge duties, or does them and complains about having to get up from the computer. She also thinks it's her duty to tell other nurses all the things they do wrong, even though she is obviously not the most qualified to call them out (literally had another nurse crying to me today about her doing this). I have gone to my manager, and she talked to her, but it hasn't changed a thing. The only thing it did was she has to sort of 'sneak' to do it at work, but our manager leaves her office so infrequently she never notices any of it. I am a bit passive, and hate confrontation, so I haven't talked to the charge nurse yet. What would you do? She makes work awful.

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Specializes in Infection Prevention, Public Health.

You should let this go. We all have times when we work with people we don't like. Be a professional. Do your best work. Yes, you are being passive by talking about these charge nurses on a chat board and tallying how much copy paper they use. If you just needed to vent, fine.

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Specializes in MICU, SICU, CICU.

https://allnurses.com/nurse-colleague-patient/how-to-not-982643.html

This thread touches on a lot

of the issues in your post, especially academic dishonesty.Just some food for thought.

With everybody and their brother

in an online program, doing homework at work is becoming quite common. If I understand it correctly, the CN is disengaged, making her homework a priority and setting a poor example. It is entirely possible that she is not

capable of doing the work on her own. Regardless, you are not the homework police or in

middle management. If the CN makes a significant error related to doing homework on the job, you could list that as a contributing factor on the incident report. Apart from that you would be wise to learn to work around having an ineffective CN.

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Specializes in Infection Prevention, Public Health.

To the OP, what strengths do the charge nurses have?

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Specializes in Med/Surg, Ortho, ASC.

Unless you (a) can list concrete, specific, against-the-rules actions by the charge nurse, and (b) are willing to document and officially file a complaint, you might as well just learn to live with it. For instance, rather than saying she's "sneaky," detail specifically how she is violating policy. Crying about losing "an entire pack of paper" will get you nowhere.

Now, complaining to patients about her workload (that you have personally witnessed): that is a documentable occurrence under anyone's policies. But only if you are willing to be assertive and file the complaint.

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Specializes in Med-Surg.

As far as strengths go, she's typically fairly decent at IV's, occasionally helps with admissions if asked, will give patients discharge instructions if asked, will give pain meds if a nurse is busy or at lunch and she's available, will run to the pharmacy if asked, and does type up about 50% of the discharges.

I doubt I would ever actually report her, I'm just frustrated...and several nurses on the floor are in school, have to take a group of patients, and barely get a lunch break; they don't complain about it, and don't have time to do any of it at work. I'm nice to her, and don't talk about any of this at work (hence why I am venting here, and it's essentially anonymous), but it's like night and day when the other charge is working. She's pleasant, helpful, attentive, and doesn't complain about helping, just does it. Maybe if the one charge wasn't so sweet and helpful (which I am thankful for), I wouldn't dislike working with the other one so much.

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Specializes in Infection Prevention, Public Health.

I am glad that you are able to see some of the positives. I don't think there is much you can do to change the situation. And you have every right to vent.

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In this situation, you have an average charge nurse and another charge nurse setting the bar much higher than it needs to be. The charge nurse being complained about seems to know what to do, how to do it and actually does things when needed.

Spend one day with me as charge nurse and see how you like things :wacky:

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Specializes in Critical Care.
https://allnurses.com/nurse-colleague-patient/how-to-not-982643.html

Apart from that you would be wise to learn to work around having an ineffective CN.

This is one of the best pieces of advice I've seen on AN. We could actually use this as a starting point for a new thread! "How to band together and help each other if the charge is busy/lazy/doesn't like you/has a full load him- or herself."

It's a lesson we all learn at some point, or sink.

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In this situation, you have an average charge nurse and another charge nurse setting the bar much higher than it needs to be. The charge nurse being complained about seems to know what to do, how to do it and actually does things when needed.

Spend one day with me as charge nurse and see how you like things :wacky:

One charge nurse performs her duties, the other charge nurse is a slacker doing homework.

Fail to see how spending a day with you in charge is relevant.

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So on my floor, we have 2 charge nurses, are budgeted for one, and so they work three 12's a week. One works Mon-Tues-Wed, the other Wed-Thurs-Fri, and then that one comes back to work the next Mon-Tues-Wed, then has like 8 days off. Then they are only free from 7-3, then pick up patients from 3-7, causing a regular nurse to be pulled to another floor (it's miserable). I like one of the charges, but only maybe one nurse can stand to work with the other. Another nurse actually quit because this particular person got the charge nurse position. She is going back to school to get her BSN, and literally calls people on other floors the whole shift to get help with paper writing, has printed at least an entire pack of paper worth of material that is school related at work, will shove her school work in front of you while you're trying to chart to ask for help, has actually complained to patients and their families about needing to work on her papers, and has openly talked about hiring people to write a paper or two for her, and continues to claim how 'honest' she is and how hard she is working on getting her degree. She then neglects her charge duties, or does them and complains about having to get up from the computer. She also thinks it's her duty to tell other nurses all the things they do wrong, even though she is obviously not the most qualified to call them out (literally had another nurse crying to me today about her doing this). I have gone to my manager, and she talked to her, but it hasn't changed a thing. The only thing it did was she has to sort of 'sneak' to do it at work, but our manager leaves her office so infrequently she never notices any of it. I am a bit passive, and hate confrontation, so I haven't talked to the charge nurse yet. What would you do? She makes work awful.

I would send an anonymous fraud , waste, and abuse report. It is against company policies to use printers for personal reasons. There is a record of who printed it.

More than one way to skin a cat.

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Specializes in critical care.
One charge nurse performs her duties, the other charge nurse is a slacker doing homework.

Fail to see how spending a day with you in charge is relevant.

NoADLs is, as her screenname suggests, quite notorious around here for bragging of her extreme laziness and ability to be efficiently lazy. She's been flamed here for pages on how lazy she claims to be.

Lately, though, she's been growing on me. She appears to be quite witty, and dare I say it, fun.

So the comment regarding spending a day with her is sort of an inside joke that a large number (most? almost all?) of us are in on. She claims to be a charge nurse in a facility that has allowed her to refuse to participate in any tasks related to ADLs with patients. She intentionally got this job for that reason, and boasts of it incessantly, takes no offense and brags about it when others complain/call her out for her laziness. Does that about sum it up NoADLs?

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