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.
When I was doing my critical care new grad residency, it was rare that I was ever expected to do nothing more than "watch." My preceptor would have me do all kinds of things-she was the one standing and watching ME (like a hawk, I might add). When patients needed to be pulled up in bed, I was the one helping. When patients needed bathing, I was the one bathing them. Hanging meds, drawing blood, running down to the blood bank, doing chest compressions in a code, etc. Still very physical in nature. I'm at home today nursing a bad back injury I suffered at home when I leaned over to put a pan into the cabinet in my kitchen. I can't imagine how I'd work in the ICU given my pain, even in a student role.
Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
I wanted to be on your side; I wanted to believe in your good intentions. But after reading the whole thread, and rereading your long original post, I just cannot.
YOU are part of the reason that employers have such negative feelings about back injuries. I seriously injured my back several years ago. We had nine people repositioning a 500 pound paraplegic, and at the "1-2-3-PULL" mark, I pulled and the person standing next to me did not. I immediately felt a "pop" in my back, and remember remarking "I felt that." But it didn't hurt. The next day, I had shooting pains down my right leg, but my back didn't hurt. My husband told me I just needed to stretch more. So back to work I went, and worked my second of three days that week. The third day, the pain down the back of my leg was pretty constant, and though I was able to drive to work, the pain was a 5 or 6/10. Once at work, I went to sit down in the report room, and couldn't control the sit -- I ended up falling into a chair. Nevertheless, I stayed. I was precepting a senior nursing student and it was his last week. If I didn't finish practicum with him, he wouldn't graduate. Halfway through the day, I HAD to leave. The pain was an 8 or 9/10 and I had difficulty controlling my right leg.
Stupidly, I drove home. The pain was so bad I couldn't sit or lie down -- I remember pacing in big circles around the kitchen and my husband put food on the counter for me to grab as I passed. I couldn't sleep that night, got up to pace and then figured since I was up anyway, I should write my student's evaluation. When I sat down in front of my computer, everything from my butt down on the right side went numb.
I went to the ER, was referred for an MRI and found out that I was one of the "lucky ones" who had a well defined back injury visible on MRI. Back injury? DUH! It still boggles my mind that it wasn't until the MRI that I knew I had a back injury.
My manager and the assistant manager that I dealt with most often were wonderful. I was out six months in total -- the first 12 weeks went by in two week increments as I tried rest, then went to physical therapy, had steroid injections into my back and when the second steroid injection left me unable to stand at all, I went to surgery. Through it all, I was in constant communication with my manager. It wasn't until I went to the unit to have some paperwork signed that I realized that my co-workers had no idea how serious my injury truly was -- many of them thought I was malingering. The longer I was out, the more my co-workers were convinced I was gaming the system.
It wasn't until years later that a new grad just off of orientation played the "back injury" card. She got light duty for six weeks, doing hand washing audits and when she was cleared to come back to work she "reinjured her back" the very first hour of her first day back. She thought she was going to get the same easy gig again, but someone else was doing the audits and she was told to stay home for two weeks, resting. The next day she embarked on a rock climbing tour of Tennessee, documented daily on FaceBook. Not a very smart thing to do, after "friending" many of our colleagues in the ICU. It was then that I truly learned how suspicious people are of back injuries. It is often assumed that the person who claims a back injury is gaming the system, even when the injury, like mine, was legitimate.
YOU, however, are truly gaming the system. You're too injured to work in your current job, but suddenly you're "better" and can transfer to ICU, because you assume that orientation will be easy and you'll spend most of it just sitting anyway? I'm thinking that with that attitude, you won't last in the ICU anyway. Orientees don't get to sit and watch the preceptor work, and any orientee who tries that is either corrected or terminated. You don't seem open to correction.
You had the nice, easy job and couldn't be bothered to show up for work when expected OR communicate with the ER manager. You didn't communicate with the ICU manager in a timely fashion -- had you called her when you were first placed on rest, perhaps you would have kept that job. You didn't communicate with your own manager. In fact, the only person you seem to be communicating with is Risk Management. (A risk manager is NOT a nurse manager.). You're hoping that instead of nasty old patient care, you land in one of those cushy jobs due to your "back injury." That is just so wrong.
I wanted to believe you and your story. I just can't. I think you're manipulative and a malingerer. After reading the thread, I believe you deserve to lose your job. And I hope you do a great deal of self-examination before you get another job. Hopefully you've learned some good lessons here that will guide you toward a more honest and open path in the future.
Horseshoe, BSN, RN
5,879 Posts
When I was doing my critical care new grad residency, it was rare that I was ever expected to do nothing more than "watch." My preceptor would have me do all kinds of things-she was the one standing and watching ME (like a hawk, I might add). When patients needed to be pulled up in bed, I was the one helping. When patients needed bathing, I was the one bathing them. Hanging meds, drawing blood, running down to the blood bank, doing chest compressions in a code, etc. Still very physical in nature. I'm at home today nursing a bad back injury I suffered at home when I leaned over to put a pan into the cabinet in my kitchen. I can't imagine how I'd work in the ICU given my pain, even in a student role.