i was telling the story in another thread about the visitor who brought in the handgun to "put his wife out of her misery" and while he was at it, threatened to put a few nurses out of their misery as well. he was arrested at midnight, spent a few hours in jail and was back in the icu to visit again by 6 am. when we called our manager, her response was "well, he's from montana and everyone in montana carries a gun"! so i got to thinking about some of the dumb things i've seen managers do.
management is a tough job, and someone's got to do it, but sometimes i wonder how they pick them!
there was the manager who wanted me to give 10 mg. of im valium to a visitor who was throwing a fit because her father just died. (dad was in his 90s). the visitor was, admittedly, throwing an award winning fit and the md ordered 10 mg. of valium im to "calm her down." i suggested we send her to the er instead. physician insisted. i refused. nurse manager got involved, and told me to give it. i tried to reason with her. she insisted. i refused. she told me to go to her office and wait for her to discuss my future with the organization. i went, i waited. i heard the code called. nm had given the 10 mg. of im valium to the visitor, whereupon she respiratory arrested. (the discussion didn't go quite as she had intended.)
then there was the manager who wasn't quite sure how to deal with a male nurse i'll call vern. vern was a bit of a practical joker, politically incorrect and had a few other issues as well. one of them was extramarital affairs which shouldn't have been a work issue and probably wouldn't have been had he not had them with patients' family members. he also had a Mediaography habit which was facilitated by the new internet-capable computers we'd had installed at the nurses' station. female nurses were always sitting down the the computers to look up lab values and finding some image of couples in the throes of passion that vern had pulled up, downloaded or installed as a desktop. sometimes it was multiple couple -- but always graphic and Mediaographic. i know the manager talked to him about it a time or two, and i know it was documented since i did some of the documentation myself. but one morning the Mediaographic photograph was adorned with the message "**** me, dr. h_______". the person who sat down at the computer and got the full benefit of vern's handiwork was dr. h's straight-laced, fundamentalist partner. he was not amused. he was most decidedly not amused.
i know vern got suspended because i heard the "conversation" through the closed door of the nurse manager's office and the closed door of the icu. so did everyone else who was working that day, most of the patients and all of the visitors. the suspension was well deserved. so was the 6 months of probation that followed it. what surprised the heck out of me was the fact that vern got promoted to assistant nurse manager while he was still on suspension!
what's the most clueless thing your manager has done?
I wish I could say this is a one time occurrence but...
One week last October our birthing center was popping at the seams , L&D was full, postpartum was full and our special care nursery, which is only supposed to accommodate six infants, had 13 babies in it. We were short staffed and everyone was working above and beyond. We were going into the weekend and we were going to be short staffed. Our manager made calls while she was there, but promptly at 5pm, she was out the door. No offer to stick around to help and no phone call from her, or the director, over the weekend to see how things were going. Thanks to the awesome group of RN's and auxillary staff at our birth center, we survived, but that weekend shed a whole new light on our nurse manager.
Specializes in LTC, assisted living, med-surg, psych.
Well, I don't think that's necessarily true of all nurse-managers and nurse-administrators. Some of us who have come directly from the bedside know darn well what can and cannot be accomplished in X amount of time with X amount of staff and X mix of skill levels. We do the best we can with what we have and try to avoid overburdening our staffs with unnecessary rules and procedures.
Then there was this administrator I worked for back in the mid-90s who had had exactly six weeks of CNA training during her administrator's course and fancied herself a medical expert. One day as I was chasing two Alzheimer's patients around the building, doing meds, treatments, and tube feeds for 28 residents and taking an assignment of eight residents myself, she grabbed me and steered me into an unoccupied room, screaming about a Betadine stain in the top drawer.
"The state is coming!!" she yelled, "You have to take care of this RIGHT NOW!!" (Actually, no one had any idea when the surveyors would arrive, but we were due for an inspection and the place needed a LOT more than a stain cleaned up.) Forget the fact that my two guys were exit-seeking, the phones were ringing off the hook and I was by myself on the unit except for two CNAs. I think I could've been forgiven for not paying attention to a basic housekeeping task, but noooooo........she wouldn't get off my back until I'd gotten a wet towel and personally scrubbed the stain off the bottom of the drawer.
I put my two weeks' notice in the very next day. She retaliated by making me work as an aide and screaming at me whenever I dared to take my lunch. Stupid, stupid woman.
our nm's are required to wear scrubs to work in case they need to work the floor. we had one nm who showed up every day dressed to the 9's. we would ask her questions to which she didn't have answers. apparently her supervisor... drilled it into her head that she had to wear scrubs to work so she finally did. when asked to take a patient she had to come clean and admit that she had never worked on a floor in her 10+ years as a nurse. she didn't even know how to hang a new bag of fluids. :uhoh21: needless to say, she was promptly let go.
my manager is best friends with a staff nurse in our unit who gets to be the charge nurse when the manager is gone. The manager has no spine and on several occasions during our daily meeting, has let staff members yell at each other or at her and just puts on a smile and acts overly cheerful as if nothing has happened. She is very concerned about people flexing out when it is slow, but her best friend clocks in 15 minutes early and stays late. I have been on call and there is the bff playing on the computer or talking on the phone. Why? When I asked, it was because "she just wanted to stay in case I needed help." Oh gee, I'm in a room or running to the ER to get my pt, or setting up my room, and she is on the computer. What a waste of money. Her bff took 3 days to do inventory on 1 cart and somehow we managed to do the rest of inventory of the entire department in 2-1/2 days. The manager just turns her head and ignores the problems going on. some of the staff are job hunting. If you are going to be a manager, you need to be knowledgeable, professional, and have a backbone.
my manager is best friends with a staff nurse in our unit who gets to be the charge nurse when the manager is gone. The manager has no spine and on several occasions during our daily meeting, has let staff members yell at each other or at her and just puts on a smile and acts overly cheerful as if nothing has happened. She is very concerned about people flexing out when it is slow, but her best friend clocks in 15 minutes early and stays late. I have been on call and there is the bff playing on the computer or talking on the phone. Why? When I asked, it was because "she just wanted to stay in case I needed help." Oh gee, I'm in a room or running to the ER to get my pt, or setting up my room, and she is on the computer. What a waste of money. Her bff took 3 days to do inventory on 1 cart and somehow we managed to do the rest of inventory of the entire department in 2-1/2 days. The manager just turns her head and ignores the problems going on. some of the staff are job hunting. If you are going to be a manager, you need to be knowledgeable, professional, and have a backbone.
Existing in reality & being objective also helps!! Most managers I've known wear blinders when it comes to their pets & are too easily swayed by having their egos stroked & backsides kissed!!
This is not something my manager did, it was human resources but very clueless. The hospital had a social function held about two blocks away. They hired buses for the nurses who were working, and we were supposed to use our supposed lunch break (which we never got anyway) to get on the bus, go to the function, eat lunch, and get bussed back to the hospital. All without exceeding 30 minutes. Who was supposed to watch our patients they never said. I was told only one NA used the bus and went to the party. In another case, my sister-in-law (equally clueless) was a manager in a different department than nursing. I was working nights and complained that we got charged for a meal but never got to take one. S-in-law said smugly that it wasn't the hospital's fault if I didn't utilize the supervisor. Seems management was told that the supervisor made rounds all night relieving the floor nurses so they could wander off for 30 minutes apiece to have meals. That doesn't even compute mathematically. Oh yes, clueless!!!
Our MN has her pets too, One is the day shift RN that does not perform her tx's. I went to NM to report a Picc Line dressing that had not been changed for 17 days because the res. c/o swelling at the site. I took the dressing placed in bio hazard bag and gave it to the NM. She was upset with me because I hadn't noticed this sooner. The Rn's are the only one at our facility that can change these dressings. The NM went to the Resident with me she examined the site and green pus spilled out. Needless to say I am the one written up The LPN not the RN that let tx go for 17 days, you know the LPN that is not suppose to change picc line dressings. The write up stated: practicing tx beyond my knowledge. I have worked at other nursing homes where LPN's changed picc line dressings, and have changed alot in my 15 yrs of practice.
Whew you guys have some stories to tell! You're making me so glad I really like my NM. I feel like she's really improved things since she came...although I think that the management above her doesn't make a lot of sense most of the time. Thanks for all your stories!
Ruby Vee, BSN
17 Articles; 14,051 Posts
that is too funny!