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As we all know this economy sucks right now....in my are of NC though its extremely bad. Our local hospital just permanently laid of 60 employees ranging from housekeeping to nursing departments. At the LTC facility I work at we are feeling it too....we are not very big...we have less than 100 beds and are on low census AGAIN...so our administrator and DON have told us nurses that we have to clock out for an hour in our shift ...every day ..every shift...the cna's take the regular 30 min...and all other depts including the office staff, housekeeping/laundry and dietary are to take an hour too.....This is putting a major hurting on my paycheck and they dont want to let me use my earned time to make up the difference. I have put in some apps for prn or pt work in other facilities to no avail thus far....I need to make up the difference in what I am losing . What bugs me about this is that on my shift which is 2nd...I do charge which includes my 2 big med passes, tx's, any admissions we get, calling the doc, charting galore, skin sweeps, dealing with the pharmacy, the lab, and families nonstop. An hour is impossible for me to do. 30 mins is hard for me to do b/c on top of my 8 hrs of work I get stuck with 4 hours of leftovers from day shift most days. My response to this hour demand was " ok...but dont come fussing to me when stuff isnt done or passed on or completed like it shoudl be." ...and omg....has stuff been messed up! important orders have been missed for important appts...like ct scans and mri's.....none of those orders belong to any of my patients luckily but still those nurses never picked up the orders and thus appts have been rescheduled and missed d/t this . I just wanna know if anyone else out there is dealing with this same thing in the nursing field and how you are handling it. I budget my money as it is..but now its even tighter. It wouldnt be so bad if it wasnt for the state eating me up in taxes after the insurance company eats my money up....I have to pay 251.00 every 2 wks out of my check for insurance for me, my baby, and my hubby. Insane!!!!! It went up 100.00 from last year and I expect it to go up again at this years renewal in november. Me and my coworkers on my shift have come up with a way we deal...since we can wear any type of uniform we bring in our uniforms and shoes that we no longer wear or dont fit and we all trade out....we have been growing some vegetables and fruits too and bringing in the extras for each other at work. One of my patients family owns a well known produce business and her hubby is always bringing us veggies and watermelons which we all share among each other and our residents if they want some.......thats just how we are dealing with it at the moment.
They just cut our pay 4 percent where I am. Don't know what we are going to do.Hubby works too ,but a lot of his paycheck is on comission.I just heard yesterday that an administrator form our sister facility was supposed to go to a new facility that is opening but changed her mind because our company offered her more money ,but we all took a 4 percent pay cut.Yeah right!
Well...the verdict just came in...my sister in law is in upper management at a hospital...she is an RN, BSN with a bunch of other long titles too long to name....she was just told that at the end of this year she will no longer have a job there because the hospital is going to probably cut out her position. She does some kind of employee health management stuff. She took a huge paycut to go work there from a different hospital...over 10000 dollar paycut and now wont have a job. My search for a prn job has fell through the cracks as well. I was pretty sure I had the job at one place....but after they told me they were going to call me back for orientation.....havent heard from them since...so i guess its a no go. Sigh.....
yes in Dec of 08 I returned from Maternity leave knowing the endo nurse job had changed.. but not knowing they were going to replace me with receptionist.. see the job went from endo nurse to endo tech... no iv starts no admit recovery or discharge...essentially a monkey can do this job... I was forced to per diem magically they were not happy with my performance at 4 more dollars per hour vs a tech..money talked loudly here ( some how the clinic lost over a million dollars during the downturn, that number goes from 1 mil to 3 mil or some number in between every time I read an email from them ) go figure... and went back into home health where I can set my own sched.
i guess i am lucky , we are getting our full raises this year( 5%) and another 1% added on for service excellence.. i am also going to get my retention bonus i get yearly the end of nov for $2,400.00 that will help pay for the holidays... but i hear other hospitals ar cutting nurses and actually letting go LPN's and hiring some new grad RN's that need jobs...the ecomony is really hurting the health care industry.. scary... i do all i can to keep my job.. it is very hard to get hired , so you don't want to loose your job under any circumstances .. i do all they ask of me.. hospitals just arn't hiring like they use to .. keep your job ..
The employers in my area have lowered wages. There is less hiring and those that do hire you will not give you work (home health). Since they refuse to pay overtime, you are stuck when you can't leave your patient. Then you get to decide between going to the labor board to get your wages, and keeping a job and getting cheated out of your pay. One of my employers just made a policy that you have to adjust your work schedule around a patient's medical appointment if you have the misfortune to be needed to accompany the patient. It turns out that miraculously now the patient does not need your services for eight hours, but it is quite ok for you to work less than eight hours at your expense and inconvenience.
Bobylon
232 Posts
Am going to post the obvious hated response, but ...... I'm glad to be gainfully employed - was laid off from my last 2 jobs (different profession), took advantage of our local hospital's LPN program, and here I am !!! Have been told we're getting a "whopping" 0.5% raise this year, but, being a relatively new grad who was collecting unemployment whilst in school, I'm OK with that for now .... I live less than 3 miles from my workplace, and love the crew I work with on a regular basis.....