My charge nurse doesn’t help us by participating in work when we are busy or when we have staff shortage. Think of it like your brother/friend is watching you cleaning and washing and lifting heavy weight repeatedly but he does not help. It is not his work.
Who is more moral, the one who helps you or the one who supervises you without helping ?
Also, nurses are health care professionals which means we shouldn’t have a nurse in charge who does not care for the patients and take patient assignments and we shouldn’t have a nursing supervisor either roaming around and doing nothing.
Professionals are autonomous and we are professional. Doctors do not have a supervisor or in-charge and they always care for patients. The CEO of my hospital is a cardiologist and he still treats patient and perform procedures while nursing director never care for patients.
What do they do all these people, charge nurses, team leaders, nursing supervisors?
The hospital installed a new calling system for outpatient clinics and my charge nurse made us nurses to monitor what ticket given to what patient and feed the information into an excel sheets. It is unfair, we care for patients and we don’t need extra assignments. Also she asks for manual writing for all patients who attended any clinic with arrival times despite having a an online system( because she is not through with it)(because no direct care for patients). It is disgusting. Why are those mangers there at all?
At my hospital charge nurses help with anything needed in addition to the charge duties. When someone needs an extra hand for a dressing change or procedure,cleaning or turning a patient, Narc waste, or if they’re tied up in a room and another patient needs something the charge nurse is expected to help. I start hearing nurses complain about management not helping when we are not adequately staffed, so the best thing would be to staff more floor nurses and let administrations do their behind the scenes work.
The only time we saw the ER manager was when there was the millennium scare when 1999 turned into 2000. He was there for about 30 minutes at midnight and left when the world did not end.
Not to hijack this thread, but this made me LOL so hard! Just the idea that we thought there was an actual chance that the world might end and that alone was the driving factor to finally get the manager to come in. Ah, Y2K. ?
They do, sort of scary to me that you are absolutely unaware of the medical chain of command. Each physician specialty will have a "Chief" sort of cracks me up that they call them that. Above them is the chief of staff. Then there is usually a VP type of position that is a physician called Medical liaison or something similar. These are comprised of the poor docs who get stuck going to all of the board meetings, critical care meetings, etc.
On an amusing side note, our nurse manager position requires the employee to step in and take a nursing assignment in a staffing crisis, which seems to occur about once a month. They just hired a mid 60s educator who hasn't worked bedside in 30 years to the position. Heaven help us.
Nursing managers need to exist because someone has to be accountable. Someone has to lead the team and establish the priorities. Otherwise it is just chaos. That yours isn't good at it doesn't mean all managers are bad or unnecessary. Quite the contrary. Can you imagine the chaos if each individual nurse was trying to establish priorities?
This has given me such a good laugh, I have never seen,met or heard of any such creature,must be a unicorn.They get paid to sit in their office all day,go to so called meetings,where they are well fed,take bathroom breaks,while their unit does fall apart but from over work,high census,poor staffing.They never roll up their sleeves to help just open their big mouths to criticize the bedside nurse,threaten them with poor evaluations and worst of all have lousy bedside skills,they make difficult situations worse,do not know how to defuse hostility in patients,families,interdepartmental staff...ooof I could go on all night.....
This has given me such a good laugh, I have never seen,met or heard of any such creature,must be a unicorn.They get paid to sit in their office all day,go to so called meetings,where they are well fed,take bathroom breaks,while their unit does fall apart but from over work,high census,poor staffing.They never roll up their sleeves to help just open their big mouths to criticize the bedside nurse,threaten them with poor evaluations and worst of all have lousy bedside skills,they make difficult situations worse,do not know how to defuse hostility in patients,families,interdepartmental staff...ooof I could go on all night.....
The term nurse manager is usually a misnomer. The fact is that most nurse managers do not have any management training. This is why a good many nursing units run inefficiently and have high turn over.
A BSN does not a manager make. If I had a hospital I would tend to be looking for RN MBA's to run things eh? Or at lease a BS in MANAGEMENT? Duh?
This has given me such a good laugh, I have never seen,met or heard of any such creature,must be a unicorn.They get paid to sit in their office all day,go to so called meetings,where they are well fed,take bathroom breaks,while their unit does fall apart but from over work,high census,poor staffing.They never roll up their sleeves to help just open their big mouths to criticize the bedside nurse,threaten them with poor evaluations and worst of all have lousy bedside skills,they make difficult situations worse,do not know how to defuse hostility in patients,families,interdepartmental staff...ooof I could go on all night.....
Wow, just wow. I've had managers as you describe throughout my years in different jobs and I've had managers quite the opposite. The problem is most good managers will burn out after awhile. Trying to make the upper management happy as well as advocate for your staff is a stressful. I've put my neck on the line more than once for my staff. I have to be careful how far I push because getting fired will not help my staff in the long run. Trying to explain to higher ups something logical that is known from working in the trenches is like banging your head on the wall at times. And I was just on a cart last Friday passing medications.
Specializes in Critical Care; Cardiac; Professional Development.
On 5/12/2019 at 1:51 AM, Leader25 said:
This has given me such a good laugh, I have never seen,met or heard of any such creature,must be a unicorn.They get paid to sit in their office all day,go to so called meetings,where they are well fed,take bathroom breaks,while their unit does fall apart but from over work,high census,poor staffing.They never roll up their sleeves to help just open their big mouths to criticize the bedside nurse,threaten them with poor evaluations and worst of all have lousy bedside skills,they make difficult situations worse,do not know how to defuse hostility in patients,families,interdepartmental staff...ooof I could go on all night.....
That is unfortunate. I have had some VERY good managers in my time and I am under one now. It is ironic that your screen name is Leader25 given your perspective on the leaders you have worked under.
RealNurseMom, BSN
21 Posts
At my hospital charge nurses help with anything needed in addition to the charge duties. When someone needs an extra hand for a dressing change or procedure,cleaning or turning a patient, Narc waste, or if they’re tied up in a room and another patient needs something the charge nurse is expected to help. I start hearing nurses complain about management not helping when we are not adequately staffed, so the best thing would be to staff more floor nurses and let administrations do their behind the scenes work.