I feel guilt ridden when I don't come to work on my days off. I don't know if guilt ridden is the proper adjective to use on how I feel. All I know is that it gets to me and bugs me for a while when I don't pick up that phone. I don't even like going to work on my days off. On my days off, my local hospital usually calls my house to see if i wanna come to work since they are short staff in nurses. I have never picked up the phone and answered it coz I'm doing something else or I'm going out to run errands.
I've been working in that hospital for 1 and 1/2 years now as an RN. I graduated May 2006. I work in a Med-surg/Tele floor.And not once have I come to work extra on my days off. I've only called in sick once, coz I was physically exhausted that day and I couldnt sleep at all.
I like the people I work with, the nurses, supervisors, charge nurses are all very helpful and nice, I love working with the patients. But working in Med-surg is often for the most part quite overwhelming. We have lots of paperwork, and often times it gets busy and I am fightin to catch up with the amount of work to be done. Not only that, but when I am assinged with a team, when they assign me to an LVN, I get 12 patients. If I work by myself as an RN, I get at most 6. I can handle a team of 6 patients by myself. I'd come to work everyday if I know that I wouldn't be assinged to a team with an LVN. For the most part, a lot of nurses don't stay in that floor for a long time. I can understand why, I don't blame them. Just when we have enough nurses, some other nurses leave to go somewhere, and we become short staff again. Its a combination of factors really, med-surg is a tough place to work sometimes.
I guess I'm making this post because I want to know what your opinions are on not keeping to work on your days off. How do you folks feel about it? I'm still new in nursing, and like I said, I've only been an RN 1 and 1/2 years.
one good excuse--"Sorry, I just had my medically recommended glass of wine for the day, can't come in to work now!"
That one doesn't necessarily work here in the critical shortage, my union rep told me of two separate instances where nurses were asked to work when impaired, one by morphine injections she was on while passing kidney stones, doc administered while she was at work, and another who was called in for a night shift while attending a Christmas party and was drinking, they told her they would get a cab to pick her up. There is literally no good excuse when the one who is calling is desperate, and it's getting worse. I never believed it either until I was asked to work nights with a fractured femur 1 month post injury, non wt bearing and in a w/c.
Get caller ID, don't answer if you don't want to work. If they keep leaving messages, unplug your answering machine. Its your time off, don't feel guilty.
I left my previous employer in---wait for it-----September of last year. I've always been a don't answer the phone kinda gal but I also never have any compunction about saying no. Or yes if I wanted the cash.
ANYWAY, I am still called---probably on average about 5 times a month since I left---with the standard sweet request if I would pleeeeaaaaaseee come in, they are soooooo short.
Yeah, that's partly why I left, and not on the best terms either!! In fact, I'm fairly certain I'm not even allowed on the property :) Sometimes I'm tempted to say yes just for fun but even I'm not that mean.
This is a an ER w/ approx. 30 RN's. Forget whoever it was that had the cops show up at her house---my co-workers apparently haven't even noticed I bailed four months ago!
Boy, talk about realizing it ain't always about you.......
I left my previous employer in---wait for it-----September of last year. I've always been a don't answer the phone kinda gal but I also never have any compunction about saying no. Or yes if I wanted the cash.
ANYWAY, I am still called---probably on average about 5 times a month since I left---with the standard sweet request if I would pleeeeaaaaaseee come in, they are soooooo short.
Yeah, that's partly why I left, and not on the best terms either!! In fact, I'm fairly certain I'm not even allowed on the property :) Sometimes I'm tempted to say yes just for fun but even I'm not that mean.
This is a an ER w/ approx. 30 RN's. Forget whoever it was that had the cops show up at her house---my co-workers apparently haven't even noticed I bailed four months ago!
Boy, talk about realizing it ain't always about you.......
Not a good idea to burn bridge. But there's got to be a way that you can block the number .... or call HR and have them take your number out of there. That'd be so annoying!
At least they're asking you, where caller ID can be very helpful (I never pick up my phone if I don't know who's calling!)
When I worked med/surg-tele as a new grad, the hospital had the nerve to assign me a mandatory "call" shift every other week! There was no getting out of it (once I begged the supervisor not to call me in and she agreed. Once). Need I add I didn't work there too long?!
BTW, that was almost 10 years ago... I don't think they would dare nowadays!
2) Your days off are ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL to your mental health
3) As Emmanuel Goldstein so eloquently put it, "Just say no." Until you feel strong enough to do that, however, invest in Caller ID.
BE GOOD TO YOURSELF!!! Your staffing manager won't, and somebody has to...
I just turn my ringer off. I check my caller ID a few times during the day incase I have a call I need to answer. Important people (at least important to me, have my cell #. Work does not!)
They call religiously. At 4:40am they call for me to come in for days. At 4:40pm they call for me to come in for nights.
I usually will come in if they need me for an extra 1-2 days a month.
Those days are carefully considered. If I just came off a 3 day in a row day, then I wont do it. I will come in if it's the day after I have worked since I'm still in work mode. I'll also go in if it's the day before I am scheduled to work and I'm not scheduled for 3 in a row.
I say yes, because I like my employer. I also say yes because I like my unit. So I'll do it only 1-2 times a month period. More than that is crazy. Med-Surg is draining work and I can only do so much.
I know how you feel. I work Med/Surg 3 12 hour shifts a week and I do look forward to my days off. This is not to imply that I do not enjoy my work, but it is demanding. Our hospital, like other hospitals, has the official policy that the number of pt.s a nurse is assigned is based on acuity, but the real practice is maximum number of 6 to a nurse, no matter the acuity. With that practice in place, some days are demanding, some days are near impossible. The irony of it, if the census is below a certain number, then the hospital calls some nurses not to come to work that day in response to ratio(so much for the policy of acuity).
nobody forces them to short staff....when it happens, I'm more than happy to come in once in a while...knowing that they better work with me if I have a family or school thing happen on a worknight....If they don't work with me, then I'm not working extra.....Plus, You can usually say...well, I'll work 1/2 shift, on just our floor, and with no more than x patients.....if they're desperate enough, they'll do it! We used to have incentive pay, and that's gone now, but the extra money is nice once in a while....
My sister (not a nurse) has a sign over her desk that says:
"Poor planing on managements part does not constitute an emergency on my part"
Try saying that to yourself every once in a while. It does help. Back in the day that nurses were allowed to be "mandatoried" in my state, (there is now a state law about mandatory overtime), the scheduler would leave blanks in the schedules and tell nurses that they HAD to stay, that they were "mandatoried" and if they did not stay they could be fired. Imagine being a 7-3 nurse with kids getting off the bus at 3:30, and no one home, as you are a single mom. Management did not care and actually did fire one nurse for not staying. Heaven forbid the DON or ADON stay to pass meds or whatever...:angryfire
nurseinlimbo
262 Posts
That one doesn't necessarily work here in the critical shortage, my union rep told me of two separate instances where nurses were asked to work when impaired, one by morphine injections she was on while passing kidney stones, doc administered while she was at work, and another who was called in for a night shift while attending a Christmas party and was drinking, they told her they would get a cab to pick her up. There is literally no good excuse when the one who is calling is desperate, and it's getting worse. I never believed it either until I was asked to work nights with a fractured femur 1 month post injury, non wt bearing and in a w/c.