No "negative" comments tolerated

[wayover20]

I work in a busy ER and we are in the grips of a new administration (for profit now) who is making such drastic changes throughout the entire hospital and morale is at an all time low. They started out by "laying off" nurse managers with 25+ years experience and replaced them with much less-experienced "yes" people. For instance, our head nurse spent no more than 4 months in the er after graduating nursing school, then took a nurse manager (nm) position on a med surg floor for about 1 1/2 years before becoming our head nurse. Now, under the administrations directions, changes are being made that impact pt privacy, dept organization and coordination with other depts. The bad thing is....no feedback about the changes is asked for and no commments (unless positive) are tolerated. In other words, she says this is what you're going to do and you do it.....don't question, don't comment. We've already had staff members reprimanded for saying "this isn't working" or "why are we doing that, it makes no sense" or the like. Even one of our docs had his hand spanked for commenting that a procedural change made no sense.

What really grips us is that this "manager" with 4 months er experience who has never done triage, charge nursing, handled a code in the er, now bends over to what admin. tells her, and doesnt' want to hear what her staff is saying to her. I know she wants to keep her job. We do too.

So why do people wonder why some hospitals can't keep nurses??? Ask the nurses who have given many years of loyal service only to be told our opinions/feedback is no longer wanted and won't be tolerated. In our hospital, at least, nursing care has taken a giant step backwards.

Thanks for letting me rant.....it's just heartbreaking to see what used to be such a great place to work go to the dogs for the sake of money.

[jnette, ASN, EMT-I]

Wow. That really stinks. Sorry about the frustration this is causing all of you.

Really makes Karen's article on Nursing "SHARED GOVERNANCE" all the more desirable...

Glad you felt free to vent... it just ain't RIGHT.. is it? :angryfire

[BadBird, BSN, RN]

This is why nurses need to be unionized, so management can't fire experienced nurses just to save a buck. Again I say, we will only be given as much s--- as we take. :angryfire

[sharann, BSN, RN]

What would make a nurse with minimal experience become a manager for a critical care unit! If she was involved in a lawsuit, wouldn't she discredit herself by accepting a role in which she is ill prepared? I am not EVEN going to ask who hired her.

I wouldn't stay to work under these circumstances.My opinion for what I'd do.

[mattsmom81]

My facility does similar things...we have a manager who does not understand our unit because she has never worked ICU. She also does not appreciate input, and if we give feedback it must match HER desires or watch out. Makes it tough to enjoy the work environment...I also enjoy a role in some of the plannning of unit activities, policy changes, etc. But here I get no input. I can definitely empathize with where you are.

[P_RN, ADN, RN]

As for Shared Governance, we had it for about 4 years, It was wonderful. We actually had the feeling that we were important and even moreso we were LISTENED TO!! We did the scheduling, the assignmnet of patients scheme, we did all of the QA, we planned everything and did it wonderfully.

It was a lot more work but gosh it felt good. Of course when it became inconvenient to TPTB for the nurses to speak up we were told "it isn't working." The Nursing VP suddenly got an urge to move out of state. Our nurse manager was quite organized....to the point that she micromanaged EVERYTHING. We went from NO turnover at all to the loss of about 20% staff every 6 mos or so. Nurses left so often they frequently never even finished preceptorship.