Motivation and morale

[MPHkatie]

We are sufferring a great, miserable pit of low morale and motivation within my department at work. Theres not enough ancillary staff, nurses are quitting, we are adjusting to about 4 new attending MD's and I myself have a plan to extricate myself from the mess, but in the meantime, I would like to improve morale and make it a more pleasant place to work. What ideas do you have? Any thoughts would be appreciated.

[daltaco1]

Those are wonderful ideas and yes they do make the staff all feel the quick fix. As for long term attaboys I have no clue but the much deserved pay raises sure would be nice.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- On a sad note here.... In approximately three weeks I will be leaving a part of nursing that I enjoyed so much due to a lack of moral. I am not a nurse....yet. I am a PCT in nursing school to get my degree and my hospital is helping me pay my tuition so leaving my hospital is not a option. Not to mention I cannot speak about all the hospitals in my town but I personally hold my hospital in the highest regard and recommend my hospital to everyone who will listen to me.( I did this even before I started working there) I worked or still am working at this time on the Hospice unit and love all my patients and their family. What I could not stand on my unit is being treated with disrespect and constantly had to prove yourself to everyone including the primadonna UA. After being there for over a year, proving that I know my job and then some, I finally came to the realization that I could knock myself out by doing all those nice things eg. flowers and cards on everyones b-days, anniversaries etc.. ( need I say single mom still getting CNApay?), busting my butt to make sure that not only the entire 16 patient load that I carried by myself and my unit looked wonderful and smelled as good as can be. Family members of the patient were treated by me with respect and many times would thank me for going the extra mile while they were there. Doctors would even come on my unit when I was working and talk to me with respect and listened, really listened, to me with my concerns about the patients under their care BUT my fellow nurses, aides and social workers would dismiss me or my attempts to mingle with them. All the shifts I covered for other aides so that they could be with their family, have a extra weekend off, or felt they were too sick to come into work became something that they felt...... Hey. Barbie will do it so I am not worried. But when I wanted to take two days off because I needed to , I was told I can't cover for you because my life is more important than yours. It hurts and lowered my moral and made me seriously think about leaving my unit or worse quitting. After much thought, soulsearching and spending time on other units and watching the staff interact with eachother I am going to transfer to E.R. Even though I sat in the background, did not do any medical services and was not part of their group the personnel there made me feel welcome, that my opinions counted and even included inviting me to the ritual morning breakfast at a local restraunt. I must say that had my Hospice unit treated me the way the ER staff had treated me then I would not be leaving and they would have gotten one hell of a great nurse when I graduate in May!

P.S. Thank you to all of you wonderful RNs,LPNs, PCTs, CNAs, family of nurses and housekeepers out there who come here and give us a boost of moral and extra strength to carry on. You all deserve a pat on the back and a raise for your wonderful work you do in your profession. You have my upmost admiration and respect. I can only hope that I can be as great a nurse as you all are!!!!!

[MPHkatie]

We actually do a lot of the pot luck nights, posters for everyones weddings, new babies, tons of outside showers. We all look forward to one nurses summer and christmas parties, and about 25 of us went out together for a baseball game, but we still have this low morale AT work. We make a good team, but the entire team seems to be depressed and irritable. It hasn't changed too much. We had a union battle a few years ago that scared off anyone who wanted to work at our hospital. Admin actually gave out back pay last year, but this year, with the stock market doing so poorly....no raises no bonuses. no nothing, I believe its time for the union to make a comback and this time, I think it wins big time. I like the flower idea, but our staff is about 58% male, so maybe something else. But i think I can definitely use several of these ideas....