Love my job but.......

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I am a fairly new NP with only 14 months under my belt working with 14 physicians in a very large cardiothoracic group. I love my job, however about 80% of the physicians I work with are very arrogant, rude and do not respect my time. I am supposed to work 7am-3pm (salaried) however that barely happens. There are times I do put in 13 hours instead of 8hrs because it gets busy or someone decides to show up late and expects me to round till 7pm when he is ready to go home. My first job was only a six month contract job and it was too far and paid nothing so I feel blessed with this position that is 10min drive with a decent salary. But I am just too sick and tired of their "greatness" attitude around the hospital and I have had other physicians ask why do I put up with them. I am not a quitter, and just do not want to leave a position just after 8months but its just begin to look like abuse. I am always getting home late, I have complained to the senior patner but nothing seems to change. Going home late and tired (especially with no extra money) is driving my husband crazy and has asked me to quit several times, but its a small community I want to keep a my good name because we get consults from almost every ER/physicians in the community and I do not want to "burn any bridges".

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Specializes in Infusion Nursing, Home Health Infusion.

Are you the only NP? It sounds like they are are wanting you to do the work of of 1.5 persons and maybe even 2. You may ruffle a few feathers since they have had their way with you thus far but you must now start leaving on time. You must,however do this in the nicest way you can. Eventually, they will see they need to hire another NP. You must change first so it shines a light on their problem! If you continue to save the day they will allow it to continue. So on your next day to work I want you to leave as close as possible to 1500 (3 pm). Finish up what you are doing and get your purse and go home and be ever so pleasant as you exit right! Keep us posted because YOU have the power to fix this!

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The NP I worked with at the OBGYN clinic was under the same kind of pressure. She got piled on day in and day out. The managers didn't want to ruffle the doc's feathers with an overloaded, but they didn't want to turn people away because $$$, so she got dumped on.

It wasn't fair at all. She was a good NP who gave great care, but she was completely overworked.

Ugh. Good luck.

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Specializes in Nephrology, Cardiology, ER, ICU.

Sticky situation for sure. Are there other NPs/PAs in the practice? If so, can you ask them? Also, why are you rounding WITH the MD? In my large nephrology practice, we round on pts, write the note and then the doc either cosigns the note after his assessment. If we have questions, we use an encrypted texting system to discuss it.

Rarely do we round together as that is not good use of time - its redundant. Maybe point that out? You can bring more $$ to the practice by seeing pts on your own, then by seeing them jointly. That should cut down on the time you spend with the docs too.

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Specializes in Nephrology, Cardiology, ER, ICU.

Merged threads

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Respond to these kind of doctors with niceness and professionalism---and an important part of being professional is respecting your own time. Iluvivt's response is a good way to attempt to remedy this. I don't carry a purse, but if I did, I would pick it up and be on my way out the door from that office by no later than a few minutes past 3pm. And the few minutes would be spent on wrapping up and signing off. These docs want to go home because they have a life. So do you. If they decide to round until 7pm then they can do so on their own. If you keep staying there late and doing things for them on your own time then they will continue to expect it and to take advantage of you. So when your work day is done, just leave. And make sure that they SEE you leaving on time every day. Besides, as TraumaRUs pointed out, what is the point of rounding together anyway?

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Specializes in PACU, presurgical testing.

What are the docs doing in terms of overtime, after-hours charting, etc? I ask this because one of my friends is an endocrinologist, and his work is almost never done. He works long hours at the office, then is charting until late at night. I have asked him why they don't get an/another NP and it's not in the cards right now for the practice. If your docs are skipping out while you stay, that's ridiculous, but if they are also staying or are taking a ton of work home, it may just be expected that you will do the same. Not a good thing, but expected. Just a thought. I hope it works out so that you can stay on a while and not burn bridges, like you said.

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Specializes in Psychiatric Nursing.

Some people are very thorough with charting. I worked one place where the medical director saw patients all day like me and did a lot of charting at home. I saw the same type of patients and did adequate charting and was efficient and left on time. It may just be a personal style. I like to chart as I go and have everything done before I see the next patient.

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Specializes in Surgery.

You have to set the standard early on. I've probably stayed late (by that I mean 30 minutes to 1 hour) a handful of times but then make it known to the surgeons that I will be leaving at X time that day to make up for staying late the other day or coming in to round on my day off..

I'm willing to be there when I'm needed but I'm not will do work much past my shift or go over 40 hours without being paid. Sorry, hire someone else. If they like/respect you enough, then schedule a sit down with them to discuss it.

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Specializes in Psychiatric and Substance Abuse Nursing.

To prevent it from going overlooked, I have to say if you're typing a lot of narratives the ability to learn how to type faster can add up to a sizable time savings in your day. There are computer programs (I used Mavis Beacon) that you can buy where a 20 min investment of time a day for a couple of months will do wonders to improve your typing speed. Responsible use of cut and paste and shortcut hot keys can save additional documentation time.

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Can you request to become an hourly employee? This way at least you are getting compensated for the extra hours! Good luck.

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This is a great forum...sorry for not stoping by early enough. So reporting back...a couple of days after posting on the forum, I took the collective advice given here and just walked out at 3:15pm...and surprisingly I got a text asking where I was and with a huge smile I said "home"...and my attending's response was "Oh Ok"...and since then I have been leaving on time (decent times 15 min to 30min late at times ) with no questions asked except for "If there is anything we can do to make you comfortable let us know ?...we want you to be happy". I have not really answered that question because I don't think I should come up with any demands yet. Again I am a fairly new NP, fairly well compensated compared to my classmates, although I work very hard and I am learning so much from these guys I just want to hang in there and soak up some experience and skills. Again I am new to this wonderful profession and any advice is very much welcome...I know some of the MDs really take advantage of me, they bill everything including my RVUs and since I am salaried I do not complain. There are some PA/NPs there that do not and will not put up with any of the above. I do not fight back like them because the least experienced NP there has 5 years under her belt and I don't so...I keep quite and do almost everything I am asked. They are well known and nationally respected surgeons with lucrative referral sources, I still don't know how I got hired there because I personally know 3 great NPs that are trying very hard to get on board for the past 3 years with no success. Our practice is close to a big name Ivy League school and all of the ACNPs trained there or the other one in the neighboring state and they are all buddies, I went to a 8k/yr state school and proud of it..so as you can tell by my tone I feel lucky to be with these guys but then again I want them to be fair to me and respect my personal time.

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