I was wondering if anyone else has any "pet peeves" at work. Things that slightly irritate you, or things that irritate you a LOT. Things that do not benefit the work flow/productivity in any way whatsoever, or things that just make your job harder than it already is
1) Alarms. I find them slightly irritating. Especially when a pump alarm is going off, and everyone in the hall except me acts completely oblivious to it. Maybe they need to have mandatory hearing tests prior to becoming an RN?
2) People who answer call lights from the nursing station. Worse, when they don't follow up on them. Actually, it drives me nuts when people answer them from the nursing station period. Especially when the pt's room is right across the hall from the nursing station!! I think this is a holdover from my nursing home days when the call light system didn't allow you to pick up from the nursing station.
3) When patients don't have fresh water in their room . Nothing worse than going to pass meds, hand the patient the pills, and find that their water cup is empty
4) Aides that are nursing students that literally spend more time talking than actually working. Listening to them talk about what an awesome nurse they are or won't shut up about the nursing job they're going to get after they graduate makes me wanna punch babies, trip an old lady, or kick my dog. Guess what? If you're not coming to work on our unit then I don't really care if you're going to the ER, ICU, NICU, Labor + Delivery, or wherever else. Good for you!!! Until you graduate you're still an aide so Shut up and go get to work!!!
I'll think of some more but those are the three off the top of my head.
pt.s that after you have spent 20-30 minutes in their room, ask them if you can get them anything else or if they need pain meds, put their light on 5 minuets later to ask for pain meds or another blanket:madface:
those dang press ganey surveys
blatantly walking by a call light to go talk or text on the cell phone.
- AMEN to the selling of Mary Kay/Avon/kid's junk. We have one RT whose daughter has CP and the guilt, OHHHH the guilt when she's selling something. I bought something from her two weeks ago just to get her to go away and she's already after me again.
- Coming back from break to find your baby has pulled his trach off, is blue and bradying, and the nurse covering you is sitting at the desk not six feet from the crib playing computer MahJong.
- Busting your tush at 0600 getting the room beautifully stocked for the next shift only to come back to no diapers, syringes, wipes, chux...
- Having to fill out a MERS report on a friend.
- Management who let parents get so out of hand they're able to get assignments changed: "My baby's nurse can't have a baby in another pod! My room-air full PO feeds child (whose bedside I LITERALLY never leave, except to shower and go to the cafeteria, for three months) needs more attention than the micropreemie on the vent in the next room!"
pt.s that after you have spent 20-30 minutes in their room, ask them if you can get them anything else or if they need pain meds, put their light on 5 minuets later to ask for pain meds or another blanket:madface:
those dang press ganey surveys
blatantly walking by a call light to go talk or text on the cell phone.
cell phones are not allowed on during work hrs at our facility. could you imagine, cna's carrying cell phones, nothing would ever get done.(sarcasm:lol2::lol2:)
Biggest pet peeve------ People who don't silence their vent alarm prior to suctioning a pt!!!!
So now I'm wandering through the unit looking for the alarm, hoping to not find an self-extubated pt, and it's just you, in the room, letting that darn alarm go on and on and on!!!
Oh man I hate that!!! Not necessarily vent alarms, but when a patient has a high blood pressure or low SPO2, and people just let the darn alarm on the vitals machine beep forever instead of hitting the silence button. Okay okay we get it I'm standing right here TURN THE ALARM OFF PLEASE I'm trying to think critically over here.
I have experinced all of these at one time or another.
My few favorites are:
1. When a bed alarm goes off everyone else acts like they are too busy to go check it out...I was taught that you get there ASAP to prevent a fall.
2. When I give meds and the patient has nothing to drink.
3. This really happened...I was new and had a very sick patient who was a full code stop breathing , and when I called the TL..her reply was"I'll be there when I can" pardon my french but *********!!!
4. The assistants who mouth off to you when you ask nicely if you will help the patient to the bathroom.
5. ANYONE who says to me "That's not my job." Really.. then what are we paying you for?
6. The family member who comes to you for EVERY little thing...so and so just went to the bathroom...so and so dropped the call light...so and so wants a soda...
7. When the assistant answers an alarm, they LEAVE THE ROOM to get help.
Funny stuff. Most of mine have already been posted. Here's my current #1 pet peeve:
A low level manager who bad mouths everyone that's not in her/his little clique. Then if you accidentally offend that person by asking "Why?" when they tell you that everybody is going to have to take an extra patient AND we won't be getting any of our usual assistive personnel either (although the acuity is high and none of the patients are going home), they go after you like a starved bear goes after a honey covered steak. THEN they get all their clique members to join them in bad mouthing you to the boss. Gotta love team spirit.
1) IV tubing that has an alcohol wipe wrapper covering the end instead of a sterile cap
2) Overflowing linen/trash cans
3) When the new lady in material services reports our night staff for "refusing" to use a program we haven't been able to log in to for ordering supplies. Lady, you are the first one giving me a problem about this. Cut it out.
4) When my manager emails the ENTIRE UNIT regarding the refusal to use the program. Why must you make my shift appear lazy to everyone else. That one I did not tolerate.
5) Seeing all the new grads leave my unit before I do.
6) I run 90% of the way to the bed alarm before someone finally yells "Got it!"'
7) Hospitalists that don't seem that motivated to try to work with you overnight and will ALWAYS have an attitude (or at least it comes off that way)
8) The endless questions like, "this patient has blood sugars BID but isn't diabetic, and it's midnight, so I should call the hospitalist to d/c that order right?" NO NO NO!
9) "Courtesy bags" of fluid that are the completely wrong fluid. Now that patient's been charge umpteen hundreds of dollars, and I can't return the bag because it's an isolation room.
10) When you "hold" the tube feeding, please flush the darn line so it doesn't clog. Kthx.
I don't know if all of these have been covered (Too tired to read the whole thread at the moment)
1) bipap's, iv's beeping and certain nurses don't even look up from their computer even when it is obviously their patient.
2) Iv beeping and even before you get a chance patient puts on their call light because the iv is beeping(at least give me a couple minutes then put on the light)
3) Patients on call light and you go to their room and they want pain meds and before you even get a chance to walk back down the hallway they are on the light again for pain meds.
4) nurse aides that get to work at 2300 and are already sitting down for lunch before 0100 when you have been there since 1900 with no break.
5) smokers that think they can leave the floor as many times as they want and whenever they want, busy or not. Then expect you to help them when they cannot get their work done.
6) day shift gets to work, right at 7:00 or a minute after then proceed to talk to everyone about their night before getting report when it is obvious you just want to get the H%$& out of there.
Coming in early, seeing all the staff sitting down at the nursing station and hearing, "sorry, nothing got done because it was such a crazy night!" and then finding newspapers, magazines, and crosswords all over the place. Riiiight. This only happens with certain people.
Having second shift come in and start griping because of something petty, like a washcloth in the hopper. Third shift leaves washcloths in the hopper too, and instead of complaining I put on my big girl panties and rinse them out without whining about it. It takes 30 seconds, if that. Get over it.
Residents whose tray tables are piled with crap. Even worse, *patients* whose tables are piled with crap. I shouldn't have to balance a meal tray on one hand and clear off the piles of junk that are collapsing and sliding all over while you sit there doing nothing. You're here for 2 weeks! 1. You don't need all this ****. 2. This is rehab! Use. your. arms. and help pick up your mess!
Having to wait on families hand and foot so they get more "care" than the actual residents do.
Phone calls on every single day off asking if I can work. Getting stalked at work by management asking if I can work my next day off or stay late. Stop burning out your current employees and hire more people.
Gotta' add another one: That oncoming nurse who truly lives to play Lab Jeopardy, instead of sincerely taking report: Where I work we already fill out a formatted report sheet (with a section on each of our patients) for the oncoming shift. When its completed, the unit secretary makes copies of it, and puts them out for the next shift. This means the next-shifters basically already have pretty much all the info they need, on a sheet, in their hot little hands, when they come to get report from the off going nurses. I can handle the on - coming shifters who make me slowly verbally read them everything on the sheet. I figure maybe they are dyslexic, or maybe they have their own system for taking report and just can't cope with the facilities printed format, or maybe no one ever read to them as a child. What drives me nuts is that one certain nurse who is so desperate to find SOME area where she can one-up another nurse that she makes giving report to her an incarnation of The Inquisition, by asking questions that serve only to try and make the report-giver feel inadequate. Its especially annoying because she and I both know she can look the stuff up at least as easily as I can. But she keeps digging for instant - answer factoids during report, until she finds some obscure bit of information I don't have on the tip of my tongue and that she just can't start her shift without (example: "What SNF was the patient in LAST year?". Answer: I don't know, and honestly I'd be hard pressed to find something I care less about.) Her favorite thing is asking about labs. She asks and asks about them, but makes absolutely no note of any answer given, UNTIL she finds one you don't have immediately available. Then she brightens up like a Christmas tree, and nothing will do but that together we search the patient's lab records until either 1) The cows come home 2) (The bad place) freezes over, or, 3) She gets bored and wanders off to find a new victim. Today I dodged the full brunt of her question-athon, because right in mid-report/inquisition, one of the patients I was handing over to her decided that was the moment to yank out their IV, pull off their oxygen, and begin attempting to crawl off the bed. I knew this because the monitor tech had the patient's room on camera and yelled that info at us. I took off running down the hall to try and intercept the patient before she fell and broke something important. Over my shoulder I viewed 'Lab Jeopardy Nurse' (who did not bother to move her behind one inch out of her chair to protect our patient) piercingly exclaim, accompanied by a loudly put-upon sigh, "I just don't underSTAND some people!" as she scowled at me. Apparently the first rule of 'Report - Lab - Jeopardy' is that no one leaves Report - Lab - Jeopardy until SHE is tired of it. Seems to me that " some people " is likely just the beginning of a long list of things this person doesn't understand, starting with how to, for the love of Pete, please get a life. Report is not a special time created from above to try and bolster one person's sadly lacking self esteem by turning it into one-upsmanship quiz games. Gahhhhhhhhhhh.
:lol2:)
MrsMommaRN
507 Posts
pt.s that after you have spent 20-30 minutes in their room, ask them if you can get them anything else or if they need pain meds, put their light on 5 minuets later to ask for pain meds or another blanket:madface:
those dang press ganey surveys
blatantly walking by a call light to go talk or text on the cell phone.