Hours getting cut

OC_An Khe · Mar 25, 2009

Profit motive and greed.Taking advantage of the economy to do the former. The only way cutting hours makes sense is if the patient census is significantly decreased for an extended period of time.

JB2007, ASN, RN · Mar 25, 2009

I have no real insight to what is happening at your facility. Many LTC facilities feel that they can treat their nursing staff poorly due to the declining economy and the poor job market. In my area of the country jobs are getting very hard to come by, even nursing jobs. I am not saying it is impossible to find a job, just that it is more difficult to find a nursing job that someone will want to work. The employers realize this and they feel that they can make unrealistic demands on their nursing staff, because "if you will not do it there are ten other nurses that are applying for a job." Personally, I think this is wrong and I do not take this quietly. Is this putting my job at risk? Yes, every time I open my mouth to voice my opinion about the unsafe situations that the management has forced on the nursing staff. However, I must voice my feelings on this matter or else I am doing wrong for my residents. More nurses must voice their feelings about this or else the employers will continue to put us in these situations that are dangerous for both the resident/patient and nursing.

bluegeegoo2, LPN · Mar 25, 2009

My facility has taken to cutting days, i.e. "full time" people are getting 9 days a pay period instead of 10. Nurses and CNA's both. Naturally, the 5000+ (exaggeration, but not by much :wink2:) supervisors get to keep their hours, but us floor workers are getting cut. I started out at 10 days, but am now down to 9. Others have been dropped to 8 days. We have 3 aides and 2 nurses on a 60 bed unit. Grant you, it's on nights, but our acuity level is going up, but the help remains the same. Just last night I had 3 major happenings on my hall alone, and didn't even touch a chart until 7:30 this morning. My poor aides run themselves ragged, and us nurses aren't much help because we have so much to do. "They" keep adding more duties on night shift because "You're the only shift that has the time". Really? Where? I routinely voice my opinion, but no one cares. I get the same tired old song and dance about "when I was a floor nurse WE took care of 40,000 residents with only 1 aide and I passed all of the meds ON TIME!!". Goodie. Here's your cookie. But seriously, all I'm asking for is one more aide and maybe a med aide. It would make a world of difference in the care my residents receive. On days and eves, they're so covered up all of the time they barely have time to breathe, much less attend to residents. But, so long as "they" can turn a tidy profit, there is not much hope for change. The bottom line will always be well taken care of. Nevermind the residents.

tigger2sassy1 · Mar 25, 2009

The nurses at the facility I work at are also having fallen victim to this type of treatment by management. We are all suffering because of it. Most of us are single people who have no other income to rely on . There are employees who are unable to pay their utility bills, rent, or take care of our own necessities in life such as food and medical care. There has got to be something that can be done to put the brakes on this. We go in everyday that we are scheduled and work giving it all we have doing the required tasks that fall upon us. And yet that is still not enough. We have increased paperwork that is put on us on a daily basis. This is a sad time when the nurses cannot meet our own needs and still we try to meet the needs of our residents. And this happening in America, it is supposed to be the greatest country in the world? What will happen when we are unable to meet the needs of our residents because we cannot meet our own? Someone have the answer to this question? If so, I would be very interested in hearing them.

evilolive, BSN, RN · Mar 25, 2009

Bluegeegoo2: I totally agree with you about night shift getting dumped on! I work 4 nights a week, and I am responsible for a whole list of crap duties to do (aka glucometer checks, census sheets, checking the code cart, 24 hour order checks, skin checks - yes, at night-, plus two medicare notes, any other pertinent notes, a 0000 and 0600 med pass, and trying to keep up with anything that happened during the day. Oh, plus it's now that time of the month where they are dumping editing for changeover on me, and I still need to finish some monthly summaries.

There isn't enough time in a shift, and now I'm getting spoken to about the "overtime" I'm accruing by spending an extra 15-45 minutes I'm spending on the floor trying to give report to the day shift. It's not that I'm not done with charting, but most of the time my ADON interrupts, and the day shift goes on tangents about issues that I cannot deal with at night. Oh, and it's not even OT! I only work 32 hrs/week and haven't gotten time and a half since New Year's (holiday).

It's frustrating. Like I said, luckily my hours aren't being touched, but I really do feel for the other staff. I never have understood the budget issues in my building. Right now, on my floor, 29-30 out of 32 beds are filled, and I think it's the same upstairs. It's not too drastic of a change, especially when I think of 4 months ago when I was forced, basically, to cover both floors at night...

CapeCodMermaid, RN · Mar 26, 2009

Nursing homes like it or not are businesses with bills to pay the same as everyone else. If the beds aren't filled, the facility is not making enough money. The bills are the same but the income goes down. Some facilities are in danger of closing. Medicaid does not come close to covering the costs of caring for people. Instead of blaming the management at your buildings, you'd be better off writing or calling your legislators. We staff appropriately and have really increased our medicare census, but we still lose money every day. How do you expect the homes to stay in business if they keep losing money?

Long Term Care Columnist / Guide · Mar 26, 2009

ITA with the above. I've worked both sides of the management desk in LTC, and I know that if the facility isn't making money, MY job is in danger. At my current workplace, we just lost our weekend differential pay and our CMA hours have been shortened to 7.5 on days and 7 on evenings; frankly, I'm glad that the cuts aren't worse than this given the state of the economy. At least our wages haven't been frozen.........yes, it could be MUCH worse.

evilolive, BSN, RN · Mar 26, 2009

I agree it could be worse. I actually noticed last night that the med nurses and CNAs are not cut for the rest of the week. We got an admission the other night, and will be getting another today, from what I hear. I might even get some hours on Monday (my day/night off) to help with changeover editing.

It stinks to cut hours, but I do understand it is based on income. I just wish I could *see* how much my facility is affected by the census.

I'm a visual learner :)

Long Term Care Columnist / Guide · Mar 26, 2009

Yeah, me too!

makes needs known · Mar 30, 2009

Last fall our facility put all of the RN's on salary. They started 'asking' the LPN's to pick up their work that they were not able to complete. For a short while they had extra LPN's on to handle the RN's extra paper workload and do med passes, DR.'s orders, patient treatments and assessments, the list goes on..

But now many of the LPN's I work with have been getting called off in the last month or two. Some of us have alot of vacation time and we are being 'asked' to use it.

Some nights when I go back to work after being called off the night before, I'm told it was a bad night and they could have used more help to handle situations. We have so many changes going on and they are cutting staff. Our floor that was ltc/rehab, is slowly being changed to all rehab and we are not getting more staff.

makes needs known · Mar 30, 2009

I was supposed to work tonight. Instead, I got a call to let me know that I didn't have to work because they had too much staff. Everyone who has vacation time is getting an extra day off every week.