Nurses Fired for not Working during Frances

julie978 · Sep 10, 2004

This was my first experience working as a nurse during a Hurricane. Med surg nurse in St. Pete, and was told I could **NOT** call in, unless I was sick. We were getting overflow patients from Pt. Charlotte, and they let us bring family and even pets to the hospital in sectioned off rooms. They had day care set up and free food. Although with Frances, 10 people called off sick, by that point I think everyone here has just had enough!

I can't see firing someone, that should be taken on a case by case scenerio: and how many people with no electricity, flooded car, or a foot of water in the driveway would you fire?

BTW, my mom is a public health nurse, and she had to work the shelters for both storms and they have had all leave/vacations suspended until Oct 18. YIKES, lets keep our fingers crossed that Ivan flares down.

Jewls

Tweety, BSN, RN · Sep 10, 2004

I presume they are talking pre-hurricane. If 25 nurses were scheduled and 25 nurses refused to come in on their scheduled day, I think they would have to do something. I'm not sure firing them is appropriate. People have family and property to protect, children to look after.

Now after the hurricane if people are flooded, have extreme property damage or whatever, they shouldn't be fired either.

It's a tricky situation. There was a local man here who the paper wrote an article "man fired for looking after 80 year old mom". He choose to not evacuate his mother and stay with her during Charley, and he was a critical employee with the power company and he got fired after 30 years of working there.

I think they are just trying to set examples. We had 26 call offs during Francis hitting us. This seriously affected nurse/patient ratio and hurt the nurses that came in, and compromised patient care. What they are doing here, is just not allowing them to use PTO.

I'm a fool, as long as my dogs are safe, I feel my duty is to the community and I will be at work. I won't like it, I'll complain scream, cry and moan, but I'll be here. Ugh.

jemb · Sep 10, 2004

The story is a bit confusing to me. Just critical care nurses? Or was that maybe a reporter error/typo and was intended to mean acute care nurses?

Also, how do you fire people for not calling in when phones and electricity are down? Carrier pigeon? Too windy for that, I would think.

How do you fire people for being late when they may have had major obstacles in the normal path -- like floods, fallen trees, pieces of buildings in the middle of the road...?

Something is missing in the story as it was told.

Tweety, BSN, RN · Sep 10, 2004

[quote name=jembAlso, how do you fire people for not calling in when phones and electricity are down? Carrier pigeon? Too windy for that, I would think.

Something is missing in the story as it was told.[/quote]

Something is missing. Such as what day are the talking about? Are they talking about before the storm and people didn't show up? Or after the storm when people were dealing with damage? Or both?