This is an idea that I feel is very unsound in nursing, and that is to place a nurse in the role of secretary for the day. Because our hospital has frozen hiring now, and because we can't keep a secretary to save our lives, now we as nurses are starting to be assigned as secretaries for the shift.
I feel this is just outright stupidity and a human resource management issue. You take a degreed person w/ nursing skills and make them work in an administrative role? Why? I mean -- you're basically paying a person almost $30 per hour to enter orders.
In this job market, there would be plenty of folks who would be willing to do the job temporarily, or as part of a pool, perhaps w/o benefits, or part time, or whatever. I don't get it. Isn't this a waste of money/human resources?
And then we have nurses on the flloor who can do it, and are very good at it -- and management loves them. Meanwhile, I can't do the job, because I feel it's sort of complicated. I mean -- you've got to know what your'e doing, especially on day shift -- so now I feel inadquate that I can't do the job! If I ask for a training day, they look at me like I'm nuts -- oh, you just jump in and do it -- and get trained on the way.
But I still feel it's an improper use of clinical personnel.
