Management wake up!!!

[Joellen]

I work in a cardiac recovery area which is relatively new. We are suffering from a severe understaffing problem. It's a very long story but I'll try to be brief. The hospital allows as many cardiac surgeries a day as are requested. We are staffed for approx. 6-7 cardiac surgeries a day but the surgeons are allowed as many as they want. Lately we have been doing about 13 surgeries with the majority of them being open hearts. This has caused our overtime to skyrocket. We have voiced our concerns to doctors and management alike and the response from management is to deal with it!! Due to the overtime I felt is was best to drop the class I was taking at the college (SO much for continuing my education). My daughter has become very upset with me and has threatened to write to the adminstration. Yesterday I approached my supervisor with the concerns of the staff and the safety of the patients. Her reply to me was to not work any overtime. I said I didn't think it was fair to my co-workers or the patients. Her reply----if you don't like it find a job somewhere else!! I am to assume that they, the management, do not care about its staff or its patients. Today I tried to take a personal day to take my daughter to the doctor,(she's been sick for 5 days). I was informed it was not a good day and that I would have to come in so try to take her to the doctor in the morning so I could be at the hospital by 11A. Like a fool I did it. When it was time to leave they were at least 3 nurses short but believe me ---I went home. Nurses have to stick together and not work the overtime. They have played on my sympathy long enough. After 19+ years of employment at this hospital I am going to look for a new job. I apologize to my patients. I have always had their best interest at heart and I am sorry that my supervisor doesn't understand our concerns. Her response was "all you nurses do is bitch"!!!

[bluesboyj]

Ahhh Moonstone, you're living in the past. In todays healthcare market, the job of managers is to do whatever it tkaes to increase the bottom line. As I've told others what we have in our beds aren't patients, they're market shares. I was told that by an administrator where I worked in Ca. It would be nice if our voices would be heard, but it's the heads of HMO groups like Kaiser (who make millions of $)give to much to legislators so we will have to do more with less. The only solution I see is for family members to sue hospitals and hmos for multiple millions of $. Until these clowns get hit hard enough in the pocketbook, nothing will change. Or simply make them have the same insurance so when they or a family member comes in with a severe headache and high bp they won't be able to get a CT paid for because it's "not covered or needed" wind up with a CVA and long term, high cost care it will be justice. Oh, and have a new grad floating to the ICU to take care of them. No critical care experience taking the head of an HMO as a pt. Hopefully on a vent with a Nipride gtt. When the patient gets worse, smile and say "because of managed care, we don't have enough nurses " and leave them to think about what they've done

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Blues Forever

[barton]

COME ON GUYS!!!!

Are you going to join in or are we just going to complain to each other forever?!?

Sophie and barton are doing something to help our patients and all of us. How about joining in??? THANKS!!!

barton

[barton]

Hi All!!

Take a look at ALL the posts under "General Discussion-Topic: Reply to barton".

PLEASE join us!!

Thanks!

barton

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[Fay]

It sounds like yuo are seriously understaffed. Don't worry about that place when it comes to your child. When all is said and done, yuor child comes first. No dying person ever said that they wished they had spent more time at the office.

Our administration came up with quite a solution!! Now, since all we do is complain they have decided to pull from our associate hospitals (or asend us there) to help staffing. Now we can be understaffed in a setting where we don't know where anything is or the policies, etc.

Safe, huh?