What's the weirdest thing management has said to you?

Nurses Relations

Published

Based on the thank you card thread, what's the most bizarre thing said to you by management or administration? I can think of a few that will always stand out in my mind.

weird_things_mangagment_says_to_nurses2.png

When discussing our patient satisfaction surveys, our manager told me in a staff meeting, "Monkeybug, a patient would much rather have a nice nurse than a smart one. They don't care how smart you are, it doesn't matter. The "little things" are what matter! In fact, a family probably wouldn't care if you killed a patient if you were a really sweet nurse." My reply was rather colorful, and culminated with me saying, "give me the smart ***** any day if I'm the patient."

I had a negative survey once because the patient had rolling veins. The patient's comment was that I should have kept this from happening. I asked manager how I was to do this, for future reference. "Well, of course, you can't control rolling veins. But I'm sure if you just apologized enough, you wouldn't get these negative comments!" (my only negative that quarter, but enough of an issue to get called to the office)

During a staff meeting about how soon we needed to respond if on-call:

Staff member-- can they call on a land line instead of using the pager? My house is in a dead spot and pages don't always go through.

Unit manager--I hope your bedroom isn't a dead spot, too.

See above! LOL - again...

Hospitals do too. Note that I said my managers' statement of "the hospital always errs on the employees' side" was one of the weirdest/funniest things management has ever said to me because it is so obviously untrue.

And is precisely why all of us should carry professional . Because the hospital will NOT back you up - they'll just hire another one just like ya.

Specializes in Public Health, L&D, NICU.
"Unit secretaries on weekends are a luxury!"

Apparently,the phones don't ring, there are no call bells, no visitors at the desk, no doctors, etc on weekends. Who knew?

At the very first hospital I worked at, we complained at length about not having a unit secretary because calls were being missed frequently, and we did phone triage for our OBs. So patients were calling with legitimate needs and concerns, and no one was answering the phone because we were caring for patients who were actually on the unit. Their answer? We got cordless phones that we had to keep in our pocket. It got really awkward. Imagine having your hand in someone's lady parts doing a cervical exam, and your pocket rings (in the days before ubiquitous cell phones). Or you'd have to stop pushing with a patient to go stand in the hallway and talk to another patient on the phone.

Specializes in med/surg/tele/neuro/rehab/corrections.
Management has encouraged us to go take walks on our lunch breaks, um yea like we have the time to leave the floor and go outside to walk around the track. Plus they didn't understand that our unit phones don't work outside the hospital, so we would be unavailable in the event of an emergency with our pt.

If you are on your break then where you are does not matter as you are unavailable anyway. It's actually against the law for the hospital to require nurses to remain in the hospital on their break in event that they need to speak with the nurse. You are on your break and that's that.

When I as being interviewed by a DON for employment, she aske me two questions. 1. How do they get the color onto M&M's without leaving a divot mark? 2. How do you make a snow globe? Like, really?? That same DON several years later, gave this answer after I asked an important question on a serious matter, "I really like your eye shadow." So bizarre!!

I went through this fall back problem while working for the state of New Mexico. I gave them copies of judgments and FLSA rules. I finally had to file a complaint which resulted in a hostile work environment. The Administrator was livid.

I worked in a very busy community ER. We were taken over by a large urban hospital, who felt that nurses were a dime a dozen, and treated us that way. After two or three nurses left, they refused to fill the positions. They told us that "when you can become more productive, you will get more staff". I almost laughed in her face, that makes no sense, if we could be more productive, we wouldn't need more staff! When the HCAP scores went way down, we got more staff. I sometimes wonder what planet these people are from. LOL

Specializes in kids.
I have one for the Management Hall of Shame:

Management complains (again) about "unauthorized overtime", i.e., the nurses being forced to chart after their 12-hour shift (let's not even mention the missed lunches) and refusing to clock out while doing it. The favorite line is, of course, that the nurses "need to manage their time better" (huh? What time? After you just gave me the 3rd direct admit this afternoon?!)

Anyway, a nurse brought up the suggestion that she might be able to leave earlier if we had acuity-based assignments instead of blocks of rooms (i.e., currently one nurse has rooms 20-25, the next 26-31, etc. without regard to acuity; with acuity-based assignments, one nurse might have rooms 15, 19, 23, etc. which would result in fairer assignments).

Manager's excuse why this cannot be done:

If we had acuity-based assignments, the nurses might get their patients mixed up.

Huh? If I can't keep my patients straight, how can you trust me to give meds?!

methinks they do not understand the meaning of "acuity"

My first year as an RN I worked at a Long Term Care facility. One day the new administrator passed me in the hall and asked how my day was going, I said, "Oh, it's pretty busy today". The administrator replied with, "Well we all make mistakes." He obviously had no interest in how my day was going, but the encounter stills makes me laugh almost 20 years later.

one of the charge nurses at a previous job: "you look white but your last name is weird; what are you?" i tell her i was born in the US and she says "No I mean where are you *really* from?" well my family is Romani. "what's that?" i explain it's what people refer to as "gypsies" but that's actually a racist/offensive term and you shouldn't call people that, and she says "i'm going to have to keep a closer eye on you; you people are known for being sneaky!"

+ Add a Comment