I work on a busy telemetry unit. I’ve been at it for 9 months. We usually have 6 patients and the acuity is very high.
The the thing is when I first got off of orientation, my ANM approached me about 3 weeks out and said that all the patients were complaining about me. She didn’t really go into specifics, she just said that they were ALL complaining and said I was too quiet. I got a good letter written about me about a week later by a patient.
A month later she said all the nurses were complaining about me giving report. I asked what were the complaints she said “ you don’t know your patients”. I said in what ways and showed her the reason they came, the hx, what was done, needed to be done, IV sites, radiology, mentation, ect... I was 5 months in at this point, 2 nd month on my own.
About a month or so later I was pulled aside and told I was doing really bad. All the nurses were complaining about report still.I brushed it off.
Very recently a patient was desatting and I got an order that I thought could be given later. She scolded me ( which is not a problem) but then proceeded to say “ you’re not getting it, this is why everyone is complaining and you are doing very bad”.
I go home and look up skills and try to study things I encountered on the shift to learn. Many times we get 6 patients with 1 PCA and no secretary so it’s hard to take it all in at times.
I have made my share of mistakes but imo they were small and mostly due to issues understanding the EMR more than anything.
My question is how can I improve? Although work was very hard I never minded. Now I’m always anxous as of late and it’s really affecting me. Any advice is appreciated. Thanks in advance.
One was a documentation issue. Pain reassessment. I had been "warned" before and was called to a second, more threatening meeting with some higher up person. After the first warning, I tried to improve, although I wasn't aware that I was having a problem to start out with. During the second meeting, I demanded to know exact details as I had NO CLUE what I was doing incorrectly. Some technical person had to get involved and pull e-charts so that we could figure out what the problem was. Once I knew what it was, it was corrected.
Another time, as a relatively new graduate, I was called in to talk about my poor time management skills. After some vague discussion and no specific issues, I requested that the nurse manager follow me around for a shift and point out ways I could be more organized and do a better job. I never heard anything about poor time management again and got along great with the manager until I eventually moved on.
And, once I was called in and told that a patient wrote a complaint letter about me. In fact, most of the night shift staff on my unit were called in and probed for details about things supposedly contained in that letter. I pretty much refused to speak until I was given a copy of the letter to review for myself. I told my manager that I could not respond to a complaint if I didn't know what the actual complaint was.
After a very polite "argument", I was given the letter to read right there in her office. It actually said nothing bad about me, at all, although it did mention me by name. It named me and two other nurses as "nice" and "good", but said that sometimes we took a little too long to answer the call light. It had been presented to me as some sort of major issue, which was not the case at all.
That's all I can think of right now. I'm a direct and cooperative person for the most part, and any issues I have usually don't make it to the manager's office.
Thank you so much. You handled all of these things very swiftly. I will use this method going foward.
I really think that in most cases when a new nurse experiences these sort of "vague" issues it usually comes down to one of the more experienced nurses who holds "sway" with a "clique" and doesn't like them for one reason or another. It could be as petty as "if they fill our always empty roster with new nurses my ability to work 20 hours overtime per week might be threatened". This is exactly what my significant other experienced in the Methodist CVICU when she started as the "seventh new grad in two years to fail to complete her orientation". One of the unit nurses actually told her semi humorously "don't you know I just put in a new pool and cannot afford my overtime to be threatened". Her life went on to become a living hell over the next six months and she was basically "terminated" on Christmas Eve. She was not able to return to her old unit (Abdominal trauma a medical surgical unit) even though she was universally liked there. Afterwards she confessed that the experience was so negative that she wished she would have died in a car crash almost daily on her way to work. The circumstances will of course differ, but this is the sort of thing meant by a poster above who said that this is probably a "toxic" environment. I would say find a place where first and foremost that the people are "nice" even if the pay is a bit less. This is especially important as a new grad. Also, it of course helps to work at a hospital with a strong union where allegations must be backed up with facts and due process (better still if you are a California RN).
Thank you. It’s a terrible feeling. The thing is the ppl smile in my face, although I did sense a sort of non genuineness from certain ones later on, but wasn’t sure if I was paranoid. I will definitely take this going foward on what to look out for.
LMSNew
10 Posts
Thank you so much. You handled all of these things very swiftly. I will use this method going foward.