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?
Wow, I've been lucky. My first DON was awesome - she was also my mentor and cheerleader as I went through school.
We worked together for 9 years until Admin changed things for the worse for patients and nurses and my DON finally quit after a long time of beating her head against a brick wall.
The next DON went along with the changes - I considered them unsafe and resigned.
I work for a wonderful manager in Hospice right now.
State surveyors are in the building. On the floor. In fact they are asking and inviting the staff to come and discuss their concerns with them.
Manager allow non nursing administrator to literally YELL and scream derogatory names at me and demand I change (i e falsify) charting done the previous night because the state might see it.
Not too bright if you ask me. Too bad I did not walk down the hall and take the surveyor up on their offer. I was a CNA back then and was much too nice.
Fast forward
Chart review; pt discharged one month ago; reveals I forgot to chart output one day. Receive first by email then in hardcopy form instruction that I should now go back and do a late entry and put in the output of that patient for that day.
UmHum. This one is as stupid as that first one who screamed at me in derogatory terms with surveyors in the house. This one puts it in writing (dated). No I will not use this except if I am approached about it I will suggest that she might use a little commonsense
Hired a nurse who'd been asked to leave his assistant NM position in another unit for having inappropriate relations with a tech at work. Worked as a staff RN on our floor for a year. As far as I know, he'd changed his ways (good for him) and was promoted to assistant NM in our unit. He was accused of sexually harrassing one of the RNs and fired. ***So why did they put him in a supervisory position again given his history???***
When I left I changed all the screensavers to "The budget is the center of all we do"..I couldn't help myself.
I agree, managers come in with only the bottom line in mind, and even if they start with ideals and good intentions, adminstration will turn them that way.
Some things my manager has done, when she first came, scheduling was just a nightmare, she would schedule 2 RN's when we only need one, or no RN at all. I went home from a shift I had been scheduled for 5 times (without pay) before I had enough and stood my ground (made the other RN go home). It didn't happen again. She did the same thing with the aides schedules, and sometimes overbooked, other times didn't book enough staff for legal coverage. Now we work short or OT every single day, sometimes on both days and evenings, yet she doesn't think she needs to hire casuals.
With workplace injuries, she fudges paperwork, ex. Rt side if it was Lt side, or loses the paperwork altogether, so when the aides go to the doctor, it is the first time workmen's comp has heard of it. Also, will call workman's comp and make up stories about claimants like that they do construction in their spare time, to negate their claim. With patients, we have had incidents occur with frail little old ladies, dementia, who we warn are at a HIGH risk for falls, yet she refuses to listen and won't implement safety measures, such as a gerichair or bed/chair alert, said patient fell and fractured C3. Family was horrified, and we never saw the patient again, but still manager could not admit her part in it. She's never wrong. She can always do it better, knows more about it, you know the type.
ZootRN
388 Posts
This is beyond clueless, this is just plain stupid.