How does write ups work in the hospital?

[Ms.RN]

When I worked in the nursing home, nurses are written up for mistakes but they are terminated based on the seriousness of mistakes but not terminated after they are written up for certain number of times. Is this the same way in the hospital? Or are nurses terminated after they are written up after 3 or 4 times? What is the purpose of the write up, is it to make nurse not to make the same mistake or improve or is it used against nurse?

[amoLucia]

Regardless of the pts' status, it was a done-deal decision to terminate you. Whenever HR sits in on those termination meetings, it's permanent, and most likely decisions will not be reversed. They're there to make sure all the paperwork is in order and all the Ts are crossed and the Is are dotted. Just formalities.

For whatever reason, they decided you were expendable. Mistakes are mistakes and there's just no rhyme or reason to judge severity. May not be fair or right. But that's their call.

[HiddencatBSN, BSN]

On 1/12/2012 at 7:55 PM, chashmonit said:

is this new for your facility? our facility just adopted a point system, which they claim is the industry standard. many of us object strenuously (and for the most part, we are very conscientious, patient oriented staff) because of the increase in punitive rather than problem solving responses. we objected to being penalized with points for calling out sick because people will come to work sick rather than be penalized, putting patients and coworkers at risk. the response from administration was that they knew we had too much integrity to come to work sick. so if someone has an active mrsa infection and works in the operating room during a total joint replacement...

we also asked if there was a reverse point system, in which points were removed or credited to us when we weren't relieved on time or forced to stay late because of staffing shortages, and they essentially laughed at us. our department, even our whole hospital, is furious over these changes, myself included.

if this is new to your facility, what has been the general response of your staff?

I worked at a hospital with a point system and it was highly punitive but also weirdly encouraging of longer callouts: for example, consecutive absences were counted as one event, and leaving a shift early for illness was less points than calling out, so it was common for people to go home (sick or otherwise) and then call out the next day to get fewer points from that, and if you were out sick one day you might as well be out sick 3 days which was the max before needing a doctor's note to come back and "cost" the same number of points as 1 day. Lateness was scored in steps so if say you were going to be more than x minutes late (I can't remember but there were 3 lateness levels) due to car issues or traffic or weather, it was the same number of points as calling out and there was no reason to try to get to work. The only callouts that didn't give you points were from FMLA and it was really, really easy to have your points sit in the "in danger of being fired soon for points" zone if you had a bad few months with illness/family emergencies/etc that didn't qualify you for intermittent FMLA. 

IDK about that being industry standard, but I've worked at 5 hospitals and it was the only one that used the point system. 

[londonflo]

4 hours ago, HiddencatBSN said:

it was highly punitive but also weirdly encouraging of longer callouts: for example, consecutive absences were counted as one event, and leaving a shift early for illness was less points than calling out, so it was common for people to go home (sick or otherwise) and then call out the next day to get fewer points from that, and if you were out sick one day you might as well be out sick 3 days which was the max before needing a doctor's note to come back and "cost" the same number of points as 1 day.

I worked for a hospital that had something like this: You could have X number of sick days but each run of sick days counted as one absence. I had developed an chronic illness where I strived to return to work after only one hospital day or emergency visit. My striving to 'get back to work' only backfired,  I was told I could be terminated because of 7 standalone absences. Crappy manager, crappy employer. 

Years before I worked for a hospital that had the most bizarre absence policy. You had to have 10 sick days accrued before you would be paid for a sick day. If you were out more than one day for illness, the second day would be paid from your sick day bank. 

[FashionablyL8, CNA, LPN]

Some policies are really strange and one wonders who wrote them and what their cognitive state was at the time. 

I do wish that there were firmer consequences at my jobs regarding absences and tardiness. Of course people should be able to take time off for legit reasons without fear of termination, but it seems to be out of control. The same people will repeatedly call out last minute with flimsy excuses or sometimes just not show up for the overnight shift (I work 2nd shift). It's really stressful going to work at 1500 not knowing if I will be going home that night. 

I think that many places are so short staffed, they don't enforce policies for fear of losing more employees. However, it backfires because the reliable staff end up leaving because they are exhausted and burnt out getting mandated and pressured to come in due to constant call-outs.