I got fired while being on orientation at a hospital for just 1 week. Why did this happen?

[Strugaaa4eva]

So I am seeking some advice as to why this occurred and am still pondering on what could have I done wrong for this to have such a bad ending. After searching and searching years and years for a hospital job (I've always worked in subacute rehab settings) and have been craving a hospital job for nearly 5 years as it will be 5 years this coming May that I graduated from nursing school. Long story short, I was hired by a local hospital and all was going well with the first week of orientation. I mean, c'mon it was only classroom work and I passed all the required exams such as the IV and medication administration. I had to take a personal call during the last 1/2 hour of our last day of class and when I returned the nurse educator was saying how I shouldn't give her a heart attack next time about not telling her where I was. I explained what had occurred and I didn't realize that 5 days later I was going to be reprimanded for that. I received a call from the unit manager I was supposed to work at stating that I was technically supposed to come this weekend for my first day of clinical orientation (I was hired as a per diem nurse) she told me that I don't need to come. Refusing to provide further information, when I asked her if the position was terminated she said "yeah kinda, you'll get a letter in the mail explaining everything." I'm really baffled about this? I seriously didn't do anything and am unsure why did this lead up to here?

Please take note, only constructive comments will be accepted otherwise demeaning, ridiculing words will be flagged. I just need to get some advice as to why this happened and if it is something usual?

[LessValuableNinja]

As a manager, I'd find the use of "technically" concerning. You didn't show up for work. You were either scheduled or you were not. There is no technicality. The way it reads is that you disappeared during orientation, could not be found, then did not show up for a scheduled orientation shift. Am I reading this wrong? If I'm not, I feel for you as a human being, but it wouldn't make logical sense to keep someone who disappeared during orientation and NCNSd during a shift.

[Horseshoe, BSN, RN]

So, she took an important phone call and the instructor was not happy. But to flip out about "not knowing where she was!!" tells me this person has some issues. How could the OP handle it better? Tell the instructor ahead of time she may have to answer her phone. Talk to th4e lawyer until the OP checked in with the instructor. But I stand by statement, this is NOT aan event to fire someone. I would consider it an omen about working there and move on.

Good Luck!

Let's not forget that we are hearing only one side of the story. The OP's perception that the instructor "flipped out" might or might not be completely accurate. We also do not know for sure that the phone call was the reason for her termination. The OP insists she did not do anything else that could have brought them to that decision, but there certainly could have been other factors she just wasn't aware of. You know as a manager that employees are not always capable of being completely objective about themselves.

I suspect the OP will land on her feet and will find a good fit somewhere else.

[NotMyProblem MSN, ASN, BSN, MSN, LPN, RN]

This was my first thought.

Seriously, though, a tele nurse that can't read rhythm strips is useless. Why would they want to hang on to someone who is unqualified for the position when a qualified applicant fell into their laps.

I can't believe a misplaced personal phone call was OP's undoing but a lesson learned. Turn off your phone while at work if you can't control yourself to not answer it.

I have to disagree with this. Rhythm strip interpretation is my weakness as well. But I'm always on floors that have monitors or telemetry patients because it's hard to find a unit without them. That doesn't make me "useless". Most hospitals have classes for this, but they also employ monitor techs specifically for reading the strips (because they realize that there are far more nurses who cannot interpret the strips than those who can). Our entire shift of float nurses were sent to the ER and one of us had a question about a rhythm. I disagreed with what she thought the rhythm was, (she thought it was paced, but I pointed out the absence of pacer spikes), but couldn't really offer any other suggestions. We summoned an ER nurse, who in turn, had to summon another ER nurse.

We get phone calls if there is an abnormal/change/conversion in rhythm, a problem with the connection, dead batteries, etc., and notify the physician accordingly if the patient is symptomatic in any way. So, if we almost never have to read the strips, one will encounter quite a few people who cannot interpret the strips. Telemetry patients are placed as overflow patients in other units just as non-monitored overflow patients are placed on tele units. To suggest that a nurse who can read strips strips is useless, well, try firing all of those who can't read them and then reasses your nurse-to-patient ratio and let me know what you come up with.

Here are my thoughts on the matter:

HR and the manager who hired this person already knew of her inability to read strips. So why hire her and then fire her for this reason? I personally think the phone call situation during the last half hour of classroom orientation was a poor decision by the OP, but also an overreaction by the hiring party as a whole, if this was indeed the reason for the termination. I think that management did not think this through from a financial standpoint when they hired the OP. When you look at the facts as provided by the OP, she already has a full time position elsewhere. So, her clinical orientation shifts were going to be sporadic at best, for the next two months leading up to the EKG class.

During this time, this experienced nurse will be receiving the higher per diem rate of pay (or not) while being precepted. I think the unit manager who did the hiring may have received a little bit of flack from his or her manager for hiring a rehab nurse into a per diem acute care position without first being required to work full time in order to demonstrate the competence needed to provide safe patient care in an acute care environment on an as-needed basis.

We all have heard the saying 'what you don't use, you lose'. What about what you've never received to use? The OP is not going to get all that she needs to be successful in an acute care environment by having an orientation as per diem as her anticipated availability availability. Today's acute care environment is far more complex than it was yesteryear. The position which the OP has sought out is equivalent to that of an agency nurse, which requires at least one year of recent acute care experience in order to even have your resume reviewed.

[Extra Pickles]

I worked with a girl once who would disappear from the floor for extended periods of time for things like going to the bank or getting her oil changed. This was in an acute care med/surg setting. Her patients would call and call and no one would have any idea where she was. When she eventually turned up, she'd just casually state, "I was at the grocery store." or some other nonsense. When she eventually got fired, she was surprised, too. Maybe there are little utopian workplaces where this sort of thing is allowed??? It's difficult to imagine.

ok wow I've heard of people leaving their units for stupid things but at least they were still in the hospital! what you describe sounds totally crazy. There was one time when a colleague offered to go to the local diner to pick up a dinner order for us (nightshift, no food to be found) and we all agreed to keep an eye on her patients for the half hour it would take her to go. Normally nursing didn't leave the building on nightshift because there was nowhere to go lol, but we were hungry! She would be using her lunch break so not like she was stealing, we just all agreed that we'd make sure everything was good for her so no worries when she got back with food for her and all of us. Reasonable right? It was less than ten minutes drive and since we ordered ahead should be plenty of time to get back. Except she took an hour and a half to get back and we all wanted to KILL her, no clue what she was doing all that time and we all had patient loads and were plenty buried when she came back with a story about how long the line was. At 1am, pre-ordered??? Anyway that was awful but at least she was doing something for US not getting her oil changed or going grocery shopping! or maybe she was lol it took long enough!

[Libby1987]

I would take her aside in private and counsel her. And then I might make another announcement to the cohort about cell phone etiquette and say, "Be forewarned." And, as I said before, if she was let go, I'd tell her in person in an "exit interview." It is professional and respectful to do so.

Counsel her how? "Taking a 30 minute phone call during orientation isn't cool"? The mere fact that I would have to counsel an adult re a 1/2 hour phone call would enough to make me suspect of her maturity.

Now if she had run back to the classroom clearly shaken up over a personal emergency that couldn't wait, I would have found her a private room.

With lawyers billing at 6 minute increments, I wonder what that 1/2 hr phone call cost. It actually makes me wonder what would warrant so much billed time, or rather I don't buy it. I'd bet the call with the lawyer was just minutes and the rest of the time was a follow up phone call to someone else involved.

[Libby1987]

I am looking at the responses and I sit and shake my head at the responses and I am reminded once again at the present culture of nursing. Frankly I feel we all need to take a look at ourselves and develop a sense of humor....we need to learn to laugh at ourselves.

I don't think your phone call was a terminating event. If this facility fired you for this and the person in orientation flipped out....which I feel is extreme....and they fired you for it.....count your blessings. IMHO this would be an extremely difficult environment to work in...keep this experience in your mind but don't let it deter you from what you want.

We don't know if the instructor truly flipped out and I might have agreed with you a year ago but I have learned to listen to my manager who performs the new hire orientation. She has predicted without fail who would make it and who wouldn't based on behavior during that time. I *used* to tell her, "C'mon, that's minor, it's their skill set I'm interested in, not how well they pay attention to that dry material." She called it everytime. Huge expensive lessons in terms of both fiscal and staff morale.

[martymoose, BSN, RN]

I'm not in orientation, but I'm taking a class right now that has several new hires in it, also. There's one chick in the class (just finished third week of this class, one day per week) who has yet to show up in full compliance with dress code.

One week was jeans (not allowed) and flip-flops (not allowed). This week was scrubs (fine) but they were rolled up to capri length (not allowed) and she still had the flip-flops (still not allowed).

'm just shocked... they made SUCH a big deal in my own orientation last year about being in compliance with dress code any time you were on the clock, and here this chick is 0-for-3 and nobody has said boo about it. I wonder if anyone would notice if I showed up in my swimsuit?

Sorry, OT, but who would wear flipflops anywhere near a hospital/health care facility- Yuck!

Carry on....

[TheCommuter, BSN, RN]

The way it reads is that you disappeared during orientation, could not be found, then did not show up for a scheduled orientation shift. Am I reading this wrong?

You are partially reading it wrong. The OP did in fact disappear during classroom orientation for 30 minutes to have a phone conversation with an attorney.

However, a few days later she was told by management via phone call to "not show up" for the first day of floor orientation since her services were no longer needed. This phone conversation was management's notification to her that her employment had been terminated.

[Extra Pickles]

You are partially reading it wrong. The OP did in fact disappear during classroom orientation for 30 minutes to have a phone conversation with an attorney.

However, a few days later she was told by management via phone call to "not show up" for the first day of floor orientation since her services were no longer needed. This phone conversation was management's notification to her that her employment had been terminated.

this is the part not making too much sense and I think it might change the context of what happened and how. The OP said that this phone call took place on the LAST day of classroom orientation, during the last half hour of that day. Five days of classroom would be Monday through Friday, so we'd have to believe that it was Friday afternoon that the call took place. She was then told to not report for weekend floor orientation, which tells me that it wasn't five days after the phone call, it was a matter of hours afterward.

Unless she mis-typed and meant to say it happened during the last half hour of the FIRST day of orientation. My mindreading isn't working out too well today lol!

[NotMyProblem MSN, ASN, BSN, MSN, LPN, RN]

I have to disagree with this. Rhythm strip interpretation is my weakness as well. But I'm always on floors that have monitors or telemetry patients because it's hard to find a unit without them. That doesn't make me "useless". Most hospitals have classes for this, but they also employ monitor techs specifically for reading the strips (because they realize that there are far more nurses who cannot interpret the strips than those who can). Our entire shift of float nurses were sent to the ER and one of us had a question about a rhythm. I disagreed with what she thought the rhythm was, (she thought it was paced, but I pointed out the absence of pacer spikes), but couldn't really offer any other suggestions. We summoned an ER nurse, who in turn, had to summon another ER nurse.

We get phone calls if there is an abnormal/change/conversion in rhythm, a problem with the connection, dead batteries, etc., and notify the physician accordingly if the patient is symptomatic in any way. So, if we almost never have to read the strips, one will encounter quite a few people who cannot interpret the strips. Telemetry patients are placed as overflow patients in other units just as non-monitored overflow patients are placed on tele units. To suggest that a nurse who can't read strips is useless, well, try firing all of those who can't read them and then reasses your nurse-to-patient ratio and let me know what you come up with.

Here are my thoughts on the matter:

HR and the manager who hired this person already knew of her inability to read strips. So why hire her and then fire her for this reason? I personally think the phone call situation during the last half hour of classroom orientation was a poor decision by the OP, but also an overreaction by the hiring party as a whole, if this was indeed the reason for the termination. I think that management did not think this through from a financial standpoint when they hired the OP. When you look at the facts as provided by the OP, she already has a full time position elsewhere. So, her clinical orientation shifts were going to be sporadic at best, for the next two months leading up to the EKG class.

During this time, this experienced nurse will be receiving the higher per diem rate of pay (or not) while being precepted. I think the unit manager who did the hiring may have received a little bit of flack from his or her manager for hiring a rehab nurse into a per diem acute care position without first being required to work full time in order to demonstrate the competence needed to provide safe patient care in an acute care environment on an as-needed basis.

We all have heard the saying 'what you don't use, you lose'. What about what you've never received to use? The OP is not going to get all that she needs to be successful in an acute care environment by having an orientation as per diem as her anticipated availability. Today's acute care environment is far more complex than it was yesteryear. The position which the OP has sought out is equivalent to that of an agency nurse, which requires at least one year of recent acute care experience in order to even have your resume reviewed.

(Had to remove a couple of repetitive words, after the 'edit' expiration, that were inserted by autocorrect).

[brillohead, ADN, RN]

That same day we had the medication exam and IV exam and the same educator was praising me for getting an 88% on it.

This is another part that stood out to me.

Scoring 88% on a med/IV exam would be proof of incompetency in my facility. What hospital is going to want an RN who screws up on 12 out of every 100 medication administrations?

I wonder if the "praising" from the educator for scoring 88% was actually sarcasm that the OP didn't pick up on, as in, "Congratulations for killing 12 out of 100 patients with your med errors!"

[JenTheSchoolRN, BSN, RN]

This is another part that stood out to me.

Scoring 88% on a med/IV exam would be proof of incompetency in my facility. What hospital is going to want an RN who screws up on 12 out of every 100 medication administrations?

I wonder if the "praising" from the educator for scoring 88% was actually sarcasm that the OP didn't pick up on, as in, "Congratulations for killing 12 out of 100 patients with your med errors!"

In nursing school, I had to get a 92% to pass. An 88% would not do. While I do not have to take such an exam for my current job, when I applied to in the LTC world, I did and the passing percentage was above 90% every place pretty consistently.