Horrible Management

[pagandeva2000, LPN]

Had a friend who worked as an RN in psychiatry. She was basically happy being a staff nurse, but I guess they were desperate and they literally begged her to come over to administration. This ended up being the biggest mistake she ever made. From the beginning, they disrespected her. Each time she put in for vacation, they would call her within the first day or two and tell her that she had to return or would get terminated. Once, she told them she was about to leave town, and they told her that unless she showed the plane or bus tickets or even reservations, she had to return. They shot down each suggestion she made to improve things. Heard the most horrible gossip about the staff nurses and aides from these same administrators. Witnessed favortism at it's worse, and was told that if she disciplined the favorites it would be hell to pay. Even those that compromised patient safety.

She decided to put in her two week resignation and attached her vacation time to it and they somehow found a loophole to make her return for 6 more days of pure torture, but she had to, because she worked there for 12 years and needed their name on the resume. She wound up taking a job that paid less and had less benefits just to leave, because they refused to let her go back to the position of staff nurse at the same job.

It shocked me to no end...is it really, really as bad as I suspected on that side of the fence?? My friend has been gone from there for at least 5 months, and she still cries because she thinks that she made the worse decision in her life-she was happy there until she saw the 'real deal' behind the white picketed fence they tried to make her believe existed.

[suanna]

I know several nurses who were happy, productive, good health care providers who got pushed into management and ended up leaving the hospital or nursing altogether! better than half of out mid-level management end up bidding back into a staff position. As hard as nursing is management is worse.

[abbaking]

It seems to me that nursing administration is similar to the high school popularity contests ("The A Group"). I guess some things never change:bluecry1:

[FireStarterRN, BSN, RN]

There seems to be a current shortage of nurse managers, with hospitals paying big bucks to bring in travel managers. Hospital administrations eat middle management alive.