This is long! I tried to be as concise as possible but there's a lot that's happened.
I hurt my back 5 weeks ago while working with a patient. I immediately reported it for workers comp purposes. I worked out the rest of my week and then when it didn't feel better after a few days off, I sought treatment via the workers comp panel. I was diagnosed with a lumbar ligament strain and given 10 days of work restrictions stating I couldn't walk any more than 15 minutes every hour. This meant I couldn't work at the bedside. My manager said she couldn't accommodate me, the risk manager said nobody else in the hospital could either, so I sat at home for the 10 days.
Returned to the doctor, basically felt the same. So I got another 14 days with those same restrictions. With WC, unless you miss 21 days, the first 7 days are not paid through WC. You have to use your PTO for it. It looked like I was going to be out more than 21 days, but then my employer called me a couple days after I notified them about the 14 day add-on and said they found accommodation. I was to report to ER to do phone surveys.
The ER manager assured me this was nearly a full-time job and that she had told the risk manager it was always here because the surveys piled up so easily. My first thought (which I kept to myself) was, "Oh, so this has been here all along and they just didn't care until it was their dime I was sitting at home on, not my own." I reported in a few days later, got training, and started. It was not a full time job. It took me 3-4 hours a day. The manager said she didn't care when I did it or how I set my hours, but when I skipped a day, she emailed me to ask if I was coming in or if she should have someone else do it. That was weird to me, because she knew it didn't take me long, and why not have a day off after I'd worked 3 days prior, and then just work 6-7 hours the next day? I explained my plan and asked for advice on advantageously grouping the days. She ignored that. I figured she wanted me to come in every day, so I came in every day. After doing it for about a week and a half, it was time for my follow-up appointment at the doctor (this was on Monday of this week).
Now before all of this, I was supposed to be transferring from my med surg floor to a critical care floor. My medsurg manager had told me near the beginning she'd speak with my critical care manager and let her know what was going on. I'd heard nothing back, so I assumed we were still on track. My transfer date was only a week away, so when I went to the doctor, I told them I felt a little better (I did) and begged them to lift the walking restrictions so I could go to my new floor. I assured them there would be plenty of new orientee education I'd have to do so I could take it a little easy at first. The doc relented but warned me to rest plenty and stop if it was straining me.
I happily gave the new manager a call and let her know I could walk 45 of every 60 minutes now. She had never heard a word about my back injury. She said I'd have to talk to the risk manager about it. I said I had been in contact with her for weeks and she'd already directed me to my nurse managers. She said she'd call me back. She didn't, not on Monday or Tuesday (and she said she would by Tuesday). Wednesday I got an e-mail from another person in that department saying I needed to call the risk manager.
Side insert: I had called my med surg manager Monday to let her know about the new lighter restrictions, and she'd tried to put me back on the floor. I said that wasn't possible since I couldn't sit 15 minutes of any of the hours between 7p-12a (the shift is just too busy) and couldn't ask another nurse to do all of my heavy work for me, and compromised saying I'd come in to help during the busy hours but not take patients. She agreed to this.
So I called the risk manager Wednesday after getting the email from the critical care department, and she informed me that my new department couldn't use me and my current one wouldn't be keeping me either. After this week, I'd be department-less. She also said that since I was working on my med-surg floor, I didn't need to do the ER surveys. I tried to explain that I'd like to do both because it gave me nearly full-time hours if I did, but she said ER didn't need me. (What? How did they go from a huge backup to not needing me in 9 days? And why didn't the ER manager tell me?)
What's worse is that after two nights of doing the resourcing, I noticed my back hurting worse. I've had to back out of that. So now I'm doing nothing again. I've got 4 different managers who can't tell me a damn thing. I've got a back that feels about as bad as it did in the beginning after doing just 5 hours on two different nights of walking around more often. I have no idea if it's going to get better. The risk manager is supposed to call me tomorrow and tell me what I'm doing next week, but she's said she was going to do that before and ended up telling me to stay home. I'm very scared that she's going to tell me I'm fired.
The weirdest part is every other person I've known who got on-the-job back injuries (they're not exactly uncommon on an understaffed med surg floor) got put in an office doing chart audits. I don't know why this wasn't offered to me. But at this point, I've been jerked around so much that I have to doubt my employer will even offer to train me for another position like case management or clinical informatics.
I've looked around for other jobs, but I just graduated last June, so I only have a year and some change under my belt. It's not enough for any of the away-from-the-bedside jobs I've seen posted in other places. It's not even enough to transfer to the non-bedside positions in my own hospital.
Is there anything I can do? Even if they do fire me, I don't think they're stepping outside their legal bounds, so it's not like I have any kind of legal recourse. I feel like I literally busted my hump working 3 years for this place (I worked through nursing school on the floor I was leaving) and I've been tossed by the wayside as just another busted nurse nobody has any place for. It hurts to know I got hurt taking care of other people and now my employer won't even take care of me.
Worker comp injuries are difficult for middle managers. They have to balance an already tight budget for their dept while paying you to do a non existent position. They're already caught in the middle and aggravating them isn't wise if you want to stay in their good graces.
I can sympathize with this, and it's quite possible that the reality is that it wasn't worth it to let me do chart audits like everyone else gets to do because my NM knew I was leaving to go to another floor soon, so there was no need to accommodate me.
But let's be real about how crappy that is. I hurt my back after years of strain on it working on an understaffed, heavy floor. Instead of the hospital taking care of an employee who's worked there 3 years without a bit of trouble and always gotten good reviews, I'm just kind of side-lined because I happened to have it occur in a time period where nobody Has to help me and I'm not useful enough for anybody to really want to. Our administration is not known for treating nurses well, but this is a new low. I've not seen this happen to anyone else.
Getting you the transfer isn't owed you, is it? How is that even on them if they lost interest in it? Maybe the ER manager with the scheduling but do you really expect the others to get after it?
Thank you for this. I'll definitely go back and read your story. That's one of the biggest setbacks -- how am I going to afford an attorney when I'm making half of what I usually do and don't have a huge amount of savings? I have short-term disability insurance, the hospital carries long-term for us (so I'm not counting on that), and I also have nursing insurance through NSO. I might start by calling NSO and asking what they'd recommend. I don't know if they cover any of that :x.
Getting you the transfer isn't owed you, is it? How is that even on them if they lost interest in it? Maybe the ER manager with the scheduling but do you really expect the others to get after it?
I don't think I addressed the transfer? I was referring to my medsurg nurse manager.
While I know there's enough education and whatnot to have gotten me a little further while following my work restrictions, I get the critical care manager not wanting to take the risk. And I know that job is likely still there for me when I do come back, not just because of FMLA, but because the CC manager is always looking for night shifters. I'm really hoping this is just a bump in the road on my way to becoming a critical care nurse :).
I can see how someone might construe the series of events as shadiness on your part, but I don't think that was your intent. Honestly, I probably wouldn't have handled things any better than you have - and I wouldn't have known that I was doing it wrong. Do you have FMLA? I don't even know if you need FMLA when you are on workers comp. I'm just thinking about job protection. Ugh. Sorry, I dont have any advice. I just wanted to say that I would have done much of the same things that you did - in hindsight, I guess the communication could be better (on all parts), but I totally get how you ended up where you did. Good luck, I hope everything works out.
Thank you for this. I'll definitely go back and read your story. That's one of the biggest setbacks -- how am I going to afford an attorney when I'm making half of what I usually do and don't have a huge amount of savings? I have short-term disability insurance, the hospital carries long-term for us (so I'm not counting on that), and I also have nursing insurance through NSO. I might start by calling NSO and asking what they'd recommend. I don't know if they cover any of that :x.
Find your state's department of labor and worker's comp websites/help lines. Something else I wish I had followed through with (I made an initial call, but missed the call back and didn't try again), but didn't because I expected that things would work themselves out.
Do you have FMLA? I don't even know if you need FMLA when you are on workers comp. I'm just thinking about job protection.
FMLA will protect your position for 6 weeks of absence if you've worked there at least year and over 1,250 hours in that year. Example: I had worked at the employer less than a year when I was hurt, so they had to provide medical treatment and cover lost wages while the workers comp case was active (I consider myself lucky in one respect; I've heard other states replace much less of the lost income), but they could have hired someone into my position during my recovery.
It's a good point to bring up. It is probably not beneficial for the hospital to let OP go while injured because they will then be responsible for the unemployment claim, but it wouldn't hurt to have the security of the FMLA safety net.
I can see how someone might construe the series of events as shadiness on your part, but I don't think that was your intent. Honestly, I probably wouldn't have handled things any better than you have - and I wouldn't have known that I was doing it wrong. Do you have FMLA? I don't even know if you need FMLA when you are on workers comp. I'm just thinking about job protection. Ugh. Sorry, I dont have any advice. I just wanted to say that I would have done much of the same things that you did - in hindsight, I guess the communication could be better (on all parts), but I totally get how you ended up where you did. Good luck, I hope everything works out.
Your name is clever and I like it xD.
With that out of the way, I did file for FMLA at the direction of my employer. Apparently there was a 2 week window that I almost missed because I wasn't even notified that I needed to do it until a week in, and there was a portion to be filled out by the doctor. But once I figured out the clock was ticking, I got it done and got it in.
I really appreciate the validation. I'm completely new to all of this. Hindsight being 20/20, I won't be making the same mistakes going forward. I just need to go see a lawyer and get it all out on the table already. I wouldn't be so anxious about all of this if I had any kind of assurance that they weren't allowed to fire me because it was taking me a while to get better.
FMLA will protect your position for 6 weeks of absence if you've worked there at least year and over 1,250 hours in that year. Example: I had worked at the employer less than a year when I was hurt, so they had to provide medical treatment and cover lost wages while the workers comp case was active (I consider myself lucky in one respect; I've heard other states replace much less of the lost income), but they could have hired someone into my position during my recovery.
I'm curious how much your state pays? We do the federal 66%, but it caps out at $575 weekly. I make almost double that even in a low COL area. This is hurting me financially in a big way :/.
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Amnesty
170 Posts
I can sympathize with this, and it's quite possible that the reality is that it wasn't worth it to let me do chart audits like everyone else gets to do because my NM knew I was leaving to go to another floor soon, so there was no need to accommodate me.
But let's be real about how crappy that is. I hurt my back after years of strain on it working on an understaffed, heavy floor. Instead of the hospital taking care of an employee who's worked there 3 years without a bit of trouble and always gotten good reviews, I'm just kind of side-lined because I happened to have it occur in a time period where nobody Has to help me and I'm not useful enough for anybody to really want to. Our administration is not known for treating nurses well, but this is a new low. I've not seen this happen to anyone else.