If you speak your mind will you get a bad assignment? Come on..come clean!

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My girlfriend seems to be afraid to speak her mind because of the fact that the management system can always send her to the lesser or busier hospitals as a float pool thing shes in.

That made absolutely no sense. Sorry.. but it didnt.

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Specializes in Med/Surg, Ortho, ASC.
That made absolutely no sense. Sorry.. but it didnt.

OK, I'll help you understand. Your most recent post clearly illustrated my point...you seem intent on "stirring the pot" yet you yourself are not a nurse. Closing the allnurses.com forum to anyone not actively involved in the practice of nursing would automatically exclude posts such as yours. Which posts have no positive effect on anything.

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Specializes in NICU, PICU, PCVICU and peds oncology.

Don't make me roll up my sleeves here folks. Let's keep this civil and courteous.

Airbrushguy, your points are well-taken, if perhaps expressed in unfortunate terms. As someone who is so definitely NOT a lemming I can attest to your girlfriend's assessment that the person who points out issues and makes suggestions that don't fit with management's philosophy will often be on the fast train to horrible assignments. There are many people who are uncomfortable with confrontation and reluctant to wear the dunce cap who will just keep their heads down and their mouths shut. It doesn't make them bad people but it doesn't help their situations either. Nurses, because of their position on the food chain, typically feel powerless to effect positive change and those who make the attempt find themselves beaten down, which further represses the others. It's not an easy situation to be in. If we could turn all that around, we'd put Suzanne Gordon out of a job. I'd like to suggest you read her book "Against the Odds" for more insight into how this all developed and why it's so hard to fix.

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ok, i'll help you understand. your most recent post clearly illustrated my point...you seem intent on "stirring the pot" yet you yourself are not a nurse. closing the allnurses.com forum to anyone not actively involved in the practice of nursing would automatically exclude posts such as yours. which posts have no positive effect on anything.

sorry to bust your bubbly.. but there are different degrees of subjective variance when it comes to "what constitutes appropriate attributes" to the velocity and integrity of a forum.

as far as me not being a nurse.. indeed i am not, but do i have to work at mcdonalds to know that their fries will be freshly made if i order them without salt? nope.. indeed i do not. all you have to do is perhaps have a friend who works there to tell you such "secrets". eh?

actually to weed out any possibility that i do not know what transpires in the hallways and offices of that hospital is totally narcissistic and ridiculous. i have been given an overdose of that place every single morning on her drive home ( 45 minutes ) for the last 10 years. so to say i have no clue what is going on is just.. well.. again.... "lemming-ish". sorry.. but i know very well what the "deal" is.

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JANFRN. .great post.. thanks for your insight. I am really heated about how nurses get jacked-over and the blind submission that is galvanized day after day within so many levels of nursing. I'll try and chisel my demeanor down a smidge.

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Specializes in NICU, PICU, PCVICU and peds oncology.

Thanks Airbrushguy. I appreciate that.

I'm sure that there are a lot of nurses who don't understand how we came to be where we are - overworked, underappreciated, repressed and viewed as interchangeable widgets. I didn't even really "get it" despite 15 years of nursing activism (I just knew it was all wrong and I couldn't be quiet about it) until I read Suzanne's book. She isn't a nurse either but she's a dedicated investigative journalist with a passion for nurses and nursing. She has written six books about "us" from different angles and they are all excellent reading... I own all of them but by far my favourite is Against the Odds.

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JANFRN. .great post.. thanks for your insight. I am really heated about how nurses get jacked-over and the blind submission that is galvanized day after day within so many levels of nursing. I'll try and chisel my demeanor down a smidge.

Sorry, can't quite buy that hearing the vent of a loved one for 10 years gives you credentials for being "in the know." You're right, that if we were talking about Mcdonald's it would....but even my clinicals have more depth than that.

I'm very un-lemming like. If anything the criticism I generally hear is that I'm just doing to much of my own thing. But you couldn't know that....you're far to busy painting us all with a very large brush.

Your passion is lovely in spite of it being misplaced.

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Specializes in NICU, PICU, PCVICU and peds oncology.

Emmhemmm.... play nice please.

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i really try and be as quaint as i can and i am not trying to verbally impress anyone with rhetoric or psychological re-bop. the point is that nurses seem to not only enable the spiral of disfuntion within the murky corridors of management but they inadvertently enable the system as a whole with their "hush-hush" mentality i.e. fear of getting sent to a floor/assignment where protocal is null and ratios are through the roof.

my validity with all of this is not only the echoing of my girlfriends misery in this system, but all of her friends and how they are scared to have a voice in this parasitic/paralizing quagmire.....hence do nothing about anything... because they might not get cherry-picked for overtime or get selected to go to a certain unit that is not busy ( see: skate / easy) .

hopefully this makes sense?

i concur. i remember thinking that if only people would stop accepting the horrible treatment that goes then nursing would be better. its like many keep it a secret. but no. many seem almost scared. some of the behavior that some nurses act like is like how an abused child(ren) would behave. its sad.

just speak up. most men would.....

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Specializes in Operating Room Nursing.

Some very interesting points made on this thread.

I have to agree that nurses tend to just put up with a hell of a lot without complaining.

I have learned a very important skill recently. If I felt my workload was unfair I would just complain to the coordinator about it. I was pretty much treated like a 'whinger' and the workload didn't change. Recently I have stopped complaining and going into detail of how unfair I'm being treated blah blah and have learned to say 'NO' and just refuse to do it. This made me quite unpopular for a while but it's amazing how different your treated when those above you know your not going to be pushed anymore. Maybe this won't work in the US though because you can't fire someone easily in my country.

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the whole point is ....is it complaining... or whining? thats the paradox were trying to narrow down. were talking about unhealthy threshholds in the system itself, and how that threshhold relates to the "best for all concerned".

i know that nursing will never ( like google ) have gourmet meals and massages, but the awareness on how google "takes care of its own", is something that should be modeled...not eat your own, and walk around disgruntled and neurotic about stepping up for your own individual voice without getting indirectly chastised via your assignments or overtime opportunitys. :idea: now sure google has the money to do this, but the principals should apply to all employment systems and i do not think this is utopian...its a starting point on how bad it really is in these hospitals and for nurses to stop walking around when they see the elephant on the couch eh?

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i need to correct the first sentence of my last post... is it complaining? or blind sumission to a broken system based upon fight or flight /livlihood and survival?

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