If I hear that one more time I swear I am going to stop wherever I am and scream. Literally. I will stand there and scream until The People come to take me away for evaluation. :uhoh21:
I haven't worked staff at a facility for a very long time so I haven't had to deal with this issue personally in eons but it still chaps my hide every time I hear it.
Today I was supposed to meet my sister for lunch. I arrived at her facility and waited in the car at the designated spot. She didn't come down after 15 min so I called up to the unit (I used to work there). The secretary told me she said to meet her on the unit and we could eat in the staff cafeteria instead. I didn't understand why but when I went up to the floor I saw a huge semi-circle around Nursing Station B comprised of nurses, aides, administrative big-wigs, and family members of a particular resident. Particular as in picky. I hear, from the ENTRANCE of the unit the man of the family (father, uncle, whatever?) yelling "I want her fired!" He is pointing at this poor aide slinked low against the nursing station half crying, half yelling something about new bed linens. The rest of the staff, my sister included, are trying to calm down the man and his female companion, meanwhile he is still yelling "I want her fired. If this is the type of trash you hire in this facility then you should be closed down and I'm going to call State."
:nono:Oh, no, not those words. That's a bad threat.
So now this poor girl may lose her job. I don't know for sure because obviously my sis didn't get a lunch, or rather, I had to leave before I even spoke to her, so I don't know if she got a lunch or not. But she missed OUR lunch date because some layman read somewhere or heard somewhere that if you threaten to call State you can get anything you want. That is an abuse of power and it peeves me to no end. Further, I feel it is highly improper and rude that a family member can dictate who is or isn't employed at a facility.
This is not to say that she didn't deserve to be reprimanded. I don't know what she did, but I highly doubt it is worthy of being fired and even if it IS, that should be at the discretion of the facility not a family member.
If it ever comes down to this for me....i'm done with nursing....period.
I'd rather work at McDonald's than put up with treatment like this from residents/family members/administrators.
This is pure BS...unfricken-believable.
I'm not yelling at you southernbeegirl but how did you actually do this and not vomit?
so i went straight to the room and apologized to the man. he sat there and told me "im going to get you fired. if i have to call the BBB, the home office and the newspapers...i'll have your job".
then the admin called me on the phone and was actually yelling at me "you fix this!!". when i tried to tell him what the man had been doing, the admin yelled at me "i dont want to hear one word you have to say. you fix this and you fix it now. you keep them from leaving!!". when i picked my mouth up off the floor i said "what if i cant?" and he said "then you are gone".
i spent the day literally waiting on them hand and foot. got him a bed to sleep in, made sure he got all his meals free and delivered to the room, took personal care of his wife all day...meds, tx, bath, fixed her supper tray myself when she asked for soup from the nausea..heck, i fixed the soup myself too. you name it, I did it. I honestly apologized to him numerous times. i played with their 18 mo old baby granddaughter and rode her around in the wheelchair everywhere. there wasnt one thing more i could have done.
i was in tears when i got home and told my husband about it and that i was probably going to get fired. he said "thank God!". lol
Where I work, the residents' families are starting to figure out that if they complain loudly enough, they get free private duty. But once you give into the insane demands of one family, you have to give into everybody's crazy demands.
Like anyone with a work history more than a few months, I have on occasion managed to irritate the hill out of someone. Sometimes I was at fault, more often not. The managers I respect are the ones who listen to the complaint, remain non-committal, investigate the facts, and then decide what to do. Even if I end up being reprimanded, I'll have a lot of loyalty for a manager that takes the time and effort to ascertain the facts, especially if there is pressure to make a snap decision.
The old saw about the customer always being right is a myth. They are often wrong, and not every customer is worth keeping.
A customer who drives away good staff is surely one who should be jettisoned asap. Not as easy to do in health care as in other fields, but there are ways.
What is critical is for managers to refrain from throwing their employees under the bus w/o good reason. The hospital has put a substantial investment in recruiting, hiring, and orienting this employee. Don't let some unreasonable loud mouth make that all for naught.
I got an email from an old asst manager after she did her "customer service rounds" reprimanding me for not spending enough time with one of my patients. I wrote her back and asked which family member complained, because the one family member was NEVER THERE when I was there, but that I spent a LOT of time with the other family member explaining everything. And if she needed proof, I'd used interpreters to do it, so there was a record there. (Not to mention my charting of it all.) She went on about how that didn't matter because I gave the impression I wasn't there to the family member that wasn't there. Sometimes you can't win. And if you're a nurse, you NEVER can win.
I hope that she quit.....I would NEVER take that from any family, staff or anyone !!!!!
I am sure her staff wants her to quit to as now she has set a precedence with this family---if they yell enough they will get the VIP treatment from the nursing staff!!--pushing the grandchild around in a WC when she has other pts to be tending to...OMG that statment alone made my head nearly explode!!
I am sure her staff wants her to quit to as now she has set a precedence with this family---if they yell enough they will get the VIP treatment from the nursing staff!!--pushing the grandchild around in a WC when she has other pts to be tending to...OMG that statment alone made my head nearly explode!!
I think we have to give her a break though. She was caught between a rock and a hard place. I want to say I would never ever do that sort of thing. But in this economy, people are worried about their job. My husband is making half what he used to, and we're in debt. If I lost my job, we'd be in trouble. Give me a threat like that, I don't know what I'd do. It's not her that caused the problem, it's the manager that put her up to it.
It does cause employment issues. I'm living proof. The reason, the manager's evaluations are based solely on customer service and budgets. Their bosses don't care a bit about patient safety unless it affects the bottom line.
I wish that someone would sue Press-Ganey and the Studor group for a pts. bad outcome that was caused by this "customer service" mentality.
I think we have to give her a break though. She was caught between a rock and a hard place. I want to say I would never ever do that sort of thing. But in this economy, people are worried about their job. My husband is making half what he used to, and we're in debt. If I lost my job, we'd be in trouble. Give me a threat like that, I don't know what I'd do. It's not her that caused the problem, it's the manager that put her up to it.
True very true--we dont know how we would react until we actually are in that posistion. I am sure once she thought about it all night long--I know I would think about those days events all night---she wishes she would have done things 100 ways different. It is just a shame that no other nurse came to her defense--I mean really someone else should have stepped in and taken over that pt. Mgmt should have backed her/ house supervisor should have backed her and she should have just held her ground---she did nothing wrong, so why have to even apologize!!
It is just frustrating as we have some known pain in the @$$ families that push push push till once nurse finally gives in---well as soon as that happens then we hear "Suzy lets us get our own pop out of your fridge" or "Suzy said she wouldnt wake him for the 6am labs" so then we are the bad nurses for enforcing the rules!!
Ok ya that just happend last week and I am still rilled up about it!!!!
I wish that someone would sue Press-Ganey and the Studor group for a pts. bad outcome that was caused by this "customer service" mentality.
As long as there is SBONs and state legislation that continues to put nurses between a rock and a hard place, health care facilities will continue to pay big bucks to follow the folly and doctrine of groups like Studor and Press-Ganey. They will never be named in a lawsuit involving a bad pt outcome. Only recently have health care facilities been recognized and named in lawsuits for their staffing practices that lead to bad pt outcomes, as a rule it has always been as long as the nurse "accepts" an assignment the nurse is held accountable.
The only type of lawsuit I see coming for any groups like Press-Ganey or Studor would be a suit brought about by nurses naming them as contributors towards creating a hostile work environment. Rewarding outrageous and bad behavior is so common in the health care industry that people now know they can manipulate any facility they walk into and intimidate/threaten any staff (usually nurses) they encounter because a facility wants to retain them as "customers." That's why we get insane write-ups or reprimands for not giving family members a coke in the middle of a code. That's why management will threaten people, like in Southernbee's situation, without ascertaining the validity of the complaint, they've been convinced by these groups that all complaints are valid and have merit.
Specializes in telemetry, med-surg, home health, psych.
I would think that the action of "pushing the baby in the W/C" would have been against hospital policy due to insurance regulations, but what do I know....
Chatsdale wrote, " bet this man gets his way everywhere by being LOUD AND MEAN!"
Unfortunately, he'll get his way this time, too, if hospital administration are the same bunch of half wits they are at a lot of facilities, thinking "customer service" is why people come to the hospital.
Unless the aide yanked a vent tube or did something equally fatal, management should back off. People under stress are often unreasonable; bullies under stress are impossible.
omg racing mom, lol. i'd be pist at your posts if you hadnt made me laff so hard!!
i am the supervisor, thats how i was able to spend my whole frickin day with them. and the nurses, CNAs and housekeepers were all right there with me trying to help because of what the VP said. (he's not only our interem admin but he's the company VP as well).
and yes...when i got home and lissned to my husband rant at me just like you did, i felt like a fool. it took him yelling at me for me to see what i'd done.
why'd i do it? self preservation i suppose. i really cant afford to just be fired on the spot.
and to answer you... YES i am quitting!
i've been there 5 yrs. the new company has had control of us for a year now and this is the crap they pull. i'm outta there! I am actively looking for a new job and as soon as i find one, it's see ya bye bye.
but you will not freaking believe what the VP said to me today! as soon as i got to work, here he came. i figgered i was going home. instead he said that the family couldnt have spoke more highly of me come monday morning and instead of them leaving because of me, they stayed because of me. he had this smile on his face that just pist me off. before i stopped myself i said "you have got to be kidding me!". he was all smiles just like, well i dont know what. to hear him say "good job" only made it worse!
i also had sent two patients to the hospital on saturday that were very sick. evidently both of those families also called him about me and evidently both families told him that i saved their loved ones life.
i guess he couldnt fire me then huh? lol. geez. i cannot wait for the day that i hand him my resignation!
and yes, i am still pist at myself. i was a damn idiot.
Lovely_RN, MSN
1,122 Posts
If it ever comes down to this for me....i'm done with nursing....period.
I'd rather work at McDonald's than put up with treatment like this from residents/family members/administrators.
This is pure BS...unfricken-believable.
I'm not yelling at you southernbeegirl but how did you actually do this and not vomit?