My Story - What's happening to my hospital?

[Tygerlile]

I'm writing this but trying to keep it intentionally vague simply because of the fear of retaliation from management at my hospital. And that in and of itself is very sad.

I've been a nurse for more than a decade and I have never seen something happen in a hospital the way I'm seeing it now.

This is going to sound crazy but I believe upper nursing management is trying to destroy our hospital. In the last year, over 30 nurses have left the emergency department. These are experienced, talented core staff and they are leaving in droves. In the last month alone, 7 experienced core staff have turned in their notices or transferred to an outlying hospital. The physicians have tried to go to bat for the nurses and have been told to butt out in no uncertain terms.

The nursing manager has been a nurse for all of three years and has 3 months of ER experience. She left one week after getting out of ER orientation. Two years later with surgery experience only she was back as the nursing manager. When she has to work the floor, the only thing she can do is be charge nurse because she has no experience with taking care of ER patients or working trauma. The work environment has become extremely hostile with nurses ratting out other nurses when they voice their concern with the situation.

There is a "supervisor" who is over the techs and secretaries who is literally the most evil person I think I've ever met. She wages war on her secretaries. She has shoved one that I know of, tried to sabotage transfers when they can't take it anymore and try to transfer to another area, impuned their morals, copied their medical files and included those with their employee files when they transfer, fires them without them ever having any previous disciplinary actions against them and despite numerous complaints to human resourses, no action has ever been taken against her.

I am truly sickened by what is happening and I feel so frustrated because no one seems to care. Our hospital was trying to obtain magnet status (that has been put on hold for at least two years) and formed all sorts of nursing councils which are a complete joke. A recruitment and retention council when the attrition rate is truly horrifying.

It is also happening on the floors but I won't go into that here.

Has this happened to any others? What can we do when management does not care and moreover, seems to encourage this kind of environment?

[Orca, ADN, ASN, RN]

I was in a situation in which a former peer became the nurse manager of my unit. She immediately set out to get rid of all the charge nurses in place, including me. I was her first target because she apparently saw me as the biggest threat to her ultimate authority. She used a small network of informants (two of whom were unhappy because I had given them less-than-glowing evaluations) who fed her information (either grossly exaggerated or totally fabricated) to build a case against me. She even had the gall to tell me (when presenting me with this litany of lies) that perhaps I ought to look into case management, "because some people just aren't cut out to be supervisors." Seeing the handwriting on the wall, I went forward with a long-delayed plan to relocate to another city.

God help those people, because 12 years after I left this woman is now the chief nursing officer of the hospital.

[camay1221_RN]

How frightening that so many of us feel the OP could have been talking about the facilities we all work for.

It's occurring in the hospital I work for also and it is appalling!