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

Nurses Relations

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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.

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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)

Specializes in Hospice, corrections, psychiatry, rehab, LTC.
On the same note, management once sent a memo around that a patient had a "difficult family" and we should basically bend over backwards to give the patient and family what they wanted. (not in those exact words, but that was pretty much what was implied). Lo and behold- family arrive. "Mum needs more pillows".

This didn't come from administration, but from a doctor in a facility where I once worked. We had a patient with a difficult family. When I say difficult - the patient's son and daughter-in-law were constantly at the desk complaining about everything they believed that we had done wrong. At one point we needed to change the patient's bed, and they acted indignant when I asked that they leave the room while we changed the bed (I asked them to leave mainly because they would have scrutinized that, too). Later I was back at the desk charting. The son handed me his cell phone. He had called the patient's doctor at home to complain about the staff. The doctor told me to apologize to them, just to shut them up. I refused, informing him that we had not done anything to apologize for. I probably didn't score any points that day with the doctor, but there was no way I was going to apologize to those people when the staff was doing their best and they were interfering with our care with their petty complaints.

[h=1]What's the weirdest thing management has said to you?[/h]

"You start next Monday." :eek:

Specializes in Pedi.

This is not something management said TO me but about me to a co-worker.

I resigned my hospital position earlier this year. I gave my notice on a Monday morning and gave them 4 weeks notice. The schedule we were on when I gave my notice ended the following Saturday. We had 6 week schedules that were supposed to be out a minimum of 2 weeks in advance- so in this case if the schedule had come out on the day that I resigned, it would have already been too late. Several days later, it still wasn't out and one of the nurses went to our manager to complain. She was told that it was late because there was "an unexpected resignation on Monday." It was 9 months ago and I'm getting mad just typing it.

Specializes in ccu.

This happened today....

Sitting in our last ACLS class w/5 co-workers from my floor. We've just finished the review, and are about to start testing. My manager walks in and tells us that the shift coordinator told her to come down, pull a couple of us out of class and to mandate us to work on the floor because they were short. Apparently, this was all okay, because the class wasn't "mandatory." Funny thing is, I wasn't given a choice about taking the class. I was signed up for it, told I had to go, and then had to pay for the book for the class.

We looked at our manager like she was crazy and asked her what she expected us to wear? Surgical scrubs, of course. But what about our shoes? Everyone is wearing business casual, as that is our policy. Oh. No answer to that one. Pretty sure the hospital didn't want to pay for us to get new shoes so we could work....

I'm still shaking my head in disbelief at this one....

Specializes in Cardio-Pulmonary; Med-Surg; Private Duty.
And how are you to know that? Is their favorite show part of the admission assessment?:sarcastic:

Oh please don't give The Powers That Be any crazy ideas!!!!!!!

I tried Fenugreek without much results, then Reglan, and it made me want to crawl the walls. Very unpleasant drug!

You are the only other person besides me that I've ever heard complain about Reglan! I see it given out sooooo often to patients, and all I can think is, "I hope it doesn't make you bat-guano crazy like it did me!"

I am the kind of person who can sleep anytime, anywhere -- the only time I ever have trouble falling asleep is when I have had more than 10 cans of Pepsi Max in the previous couple of hours. But while taking Reglan in an attempt to increase my milk supply, I was a complete insomniac every time I tried to sleep! I was tired as all get out, but simply could NOT fall asleep when I tried. I was so drowsy that I could fall asleep sitting up doing my work or nursing my baby -- I could even fall asleep standing up!!! -- but I could *not* sleep when I wanted/needed to.

It actually got so bad that I felt like I was on the verge of a psychotic break... if my husband hadn't been home to take care of the baby, I would have taken him to my MIL's house to have her watch him, because I felt like I wasn't even competent enough to care for him anymore -- like my thought processes weren't even functioning.

I stopped taking the Reglan, handed the baby to my husband, and said, "Bring him to me in bed when he needs to nurse, other than that I don't want to see/hear from either of you until I emerge from the bedroom!" and I *finally* got some decent sleep. That was over twelve years ago, and I've never had trouble sleeping since -- it was just that stupid drug!

"Please apologize to family of the patient that just shoved you into a doorframe ."

Uh-huh. I'll get right on that.

Specializes in OR, GI, Endoscopy.

"We want you to lower your performance to be like everyone else in the unit." -----> Seriously?

"Maybe you just came to America and don't know about the custom here."----> huh? after 16 yrs of living and working here.

We had a really mean pt on our oncology unit. I was told she was a very intelligent and articulate woman who was in denial for a long time and who was now trying to blame the medical establishment for her life limiting cancer. She was leaving the unit for daily radiation tx. Lucky for me I never was assigned to her during her two or three brief stays with us. Next door to her was my sweet, simple pt--a frequent flier who had life limiting colon cancer. She was on heavy amounts of Dilauded and was a bit of a scatterbrained to begin with.

She would leave the unit frequently with IV pole in tow to visit the vending machines or people watch in the lobby. Upon returning, My scatter brain sweat-heart pt passed me by at the front desk establishing it would be another hour before she could have her PRN Dilauded/Benedryl combo. She left me and went out of sight down the hall where she settled into the wrong room, sitting on the edge of the bed of the mean pt who started to pitch a fit on the level you've never heard/seen before when she returned with her transport team who had already been yelled at several times for various things. Needless to say they disappeared as soon as they could so she leashed a full fury attack on my sweet pt--throwing racial slurs and just saying the meanest things.

My pt had barely sat down and didn't touch anything, still we remade the bed and obtained a new meal tray. We arranged for a flower delivery. We even wiped all surfaces down with Sani Wipes and called housekeeping to clean the restroom. Mean Lady berated me the whole time to her own nurse who she also treated badly.

While I and the other nurse attempted to do "service recovery" on the mean pt. (and I kindly asked the relief nurse to settle my crying pt into her own room and pull some Ativan early for her based on a phone order I had just obtained), my manager pulled me aside and said she would be writing me up for not preventing my pt from going into the wrong room. That I should have been rounding frequently enough to have noticed my pt was in the wrong room.

So tell me, I asked, how would I know my frequently ambulating/restless pt had settled into the room covered by another nurse? She told me that I should been a good enough nurse to have prevented the situation. Hmmm, I thought to myself, no amount of "good nursing" was going to prevent an honest mistake from happening that was totally unrelated to my nursing care. Am I right?

I certainly see your point. Your manager sounds like so many managers I've seen in operation. They are tough enough, mean enough to tell you to do something that no human nurse, including them, could ever be able to do.

After a while, I think they actually start believing what they say. I can see their point, too. They have mouths to feed, bills to pay.

Maybe, if you think it won't incur too much ire on her part, write out your response, just as you have described it here, and have it put into your personnel file. The thing about rounding - you can round now at Site A, but in the next moment, you will be somewhere else - Site B - and not see what is happening at site A. So frequency isn't necessarily the issue - it's luck, just plain old luck.

I, too, remember being a new charge nurse and being told by my unit manager that the reason I was so stressed was because I didn't take my breaks/meal breaks! I had told her I COULDN'T take them because my whole staff was new, I was new to charge, and each of us always had more patients than we could realistically handle. WHEN was I supposed to take these magical rejuvenating breaks?

Her answer: Oh, you simply have to leave the floor--take a walk outside in the parking lot. Take a walk down the street (keep in mind it's nightshift and in a bad section of town!!).

Me: Ok, you want me to take a mental break, I get it, but....WHEN? Do you have a float nurse to cover all of my staff and me for our breaks?

Her: No, you don't need coverage. You just tell the others you are taking ten or fifteen minutes off the floor, and then you GO.

Me: Hmm.....really? I should just pick myself up and leave? What about the fact that my staff won't POSSIBLY have time to keep an eye on my patients as well as theirs? And that *I* don't have time to watch their patients while THEY are taking a ten-minute romp in the parking lot??

Her: You can ask the nursing supervisor to cover you.

Me: Really? The same nursing supervisor that keeps slamming me with admissions and doesn't have enough time to help start a difficult IV.....she's supposed to cover me for every break I need, every shift?

Her: Don't make a big deal about it. Just go.

Me: Can't wait for THAT lawsuit. No, thanks for the suggestions, but I think I'll have to stick with slowly losing my sanity in order to keep my patients safe. Your way, though, is sure a NIFTY idea....

Write to Congress.

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?!

I haven't had anything to compare to some of these stories but, I once had a NH Administrator tell me I had to be in two places at the same time, and yes, he did know what he was saying. Still trying to wrap my head around that one.

Specializes in Medical Surgical.

So many choices..... one that sticks out in my mind: Every year there was an employee picnic. One year the powers that be hired some buses to transport the nurses who were working that day out to the fields (about a 5 minute bus ride) on their (nonexistent) lunch breaks so they could frolic in the open air too. Who was supposed to be watching the patients? Never enough staff to run to the cafeteria, let alone do something like that. It was a real slap in the face to see how very little management knew about our actual working conditions. I think 2 or 3 nurses did get on the bus, but I'm sure they were supervisory quality :) so free to be playful.

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