My new Nurse Manager is making everyone want to quit

[Meridian]

Our old Nurse Manager left the position to become a part-time floor nurse and a new one was hired a couple months later and nobody can stand her. She changed our pt ratio from around 5 to 1 or 6 to 1 (on good days 4 to 1) to Team Nursing. Which means if when have 24 pts, there will be 2 RN's and 2 LPN's and we split the pts down the middle (12 to 1) and Yes I mean 12 to 1. It's like having 12 pt.'s to yourself even though you split the duties. The LPN's give a ton of po meds, the RN's give a boat load of IV meds, prns, and also have to do assessments (Imagine the paperwork). ON top of that, we never feel like we did a good job at pt. care. We don't get time to read their histories or to actually talk to them because we're running constantly. We don't even get group report. I actually liked knowing about what was going on with everyone else's pt.s especially when there was an emergency and we all had to pull together or in case a physician came by and the pt.s nurse was busy. Now we don't know anything about anyone. It's frustrating and she's changing up even more crap and people are quitting or becoming prn because they can't deal with it on a daily basis and the "idiots in charge" have done nothing to fix it. We don't have enough staff to take care of the pts properly and the rate of falls is increasing along with bedsores. There is plenty of talk of some of the people I work with quitting and they are great nurses who have been at it along time who used to LOVE to come to work. I don't know what to do.:angryfire

[llg, PhD, RN]

That type of thing is happening in a lot of work setting these days and employers are trying to save money. It's probably not all the new manager's fault. She may have been ordered to do those things from her boss. In fact, the directives coming from the executive level of leadership may have been at least partly responsible for the old manager stepping down ... and explain why the new person was hired. The new person was willing to take the unit in the direction the executives wanted it to go.

Whether it is worth it to stay or not is something only you can stay. It's probably not realistic to expect it to go back to the way it used to be. But in this economy, it might be difficult for you to find another job quickly. If you decide to leave, you might want to look around to see if you can find a better work situation before you give up your current one.

[Meridian]

The old Nurse Manager left because they tried to add more responsibilities to her job that was originally a separate job, but the woman who did that job went on maternity leave and they weren't willing to let her work from home. When asked if the policy was corporate wide (it's a series of LTAC hospitals) she said that it wasn't. We even have physicians that were promised that the nurses taking care of their vent pt.s would have no more than a 2 to 1 ratio, but these nurses think it's okay to give them 3 to 1. They are pretty much screwed if they have to code one because no would would be able to monitor the other five vent/critical pt.s. They are causing a lot of folks to leave and yet they act as though patient satisfaction is number 1. She excuses every change she makes as "she did this at her other job". So of course it must be right here???!!!!

[caliotter3]

Well, it boils down to staying and putting up with this, or looking for greener pastures and leaving, like everyone else. Only you know how much you can tolerate and what the job market is like in your neck of the woods. Good luck with this.

[Meridian]

I just hate it. I used to enjoy going to work and seeing and talking to my pts and now I don't. I can't even sit and talk to them because I need to rush to do something else for another pt. We are like a family and when one person in particular said that, she said she would put a stop to that. She seems to have it out for one person in particular, our Charge Nurse, who keeps getting wrote up for things like taking pts when it gets to a 7 to 1 ratio or when a nurse was "on call" but never showed up so we were short, but she won't do the same to other Charge Nurses. Alot of people respect the woman she seems to want to ruin.

[8jimi8ICURN]

Sounds like you should get together with all of the staff and as a group, go above her head and make an ultimatum. Change the environment, or we'll shut your floor down.

I would suggest having another job to go to before trying this.

[morte, LPN, LVN]

well, if it is not corporate wide, perhaps bringing it to risk management on a corp level might help....also make sure (discretely) that the docs are aware in the change of care their patients are receiving...

[Meridian]

well, if it is not corporate wide, perhaps bringing it to risk management on a corp level might help....also make sure (discretely) that the docs are aware in the change of care their patients are receiving...

They know. One showed up and couldn't find the nurse for his pt and the nurses station was completely empty and when one came into the nurses station he asked how many nurses they had and when she told them 2 for 6 vent pts he went ballistic. It was brought up to certain doctors on more than one occasion also. It was even brought up at a meeting and Nurse Manager acted as though it didn't matter. She is from a different hospital in a different city than ours but she acts as though she knows the doctors better than anyone there.:icon_roll