Placed on Performance Improvement Plan - What should I do?

Dear Nurse Beth Advice Column - The following letter submitted anonymously in search for answers. Join the conversation!

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Very few do honest exit interviews for fear of retaliation. Toxic managers often extend their bullying to include bad references. If given the op I do them. Have some classics. Wish I could be a fly on the wall of those places. I have seen toxic managers removed from positions so they can no longer harm.

Placement on a Performance Improvement Plan = (In At-Will Employer [Corporations] is Code for We don't want you working for or under me). Touch up your Resume/CV now.

If you like the job and want to keep it, suck it up and make nicer. I think keeping track of your day and interactions is perfect and keeps you accountable to yourself, sort of like keeping track of what you eat while on a diet. My other suggestions forget about confronting the techs. Assume it was all of them and say to them XYZ I just want to make sure you feel comfortable coming to me if you need assistance or guidance, if I have ever seemed rude my apology its important that you know I am here to support you as well as my patients. Kill them with kindness. Thrust me I have been through this. You are not in a position as I was, I told my nurse manager unless she can give me an example or make up one similiar please do not approach me in this manner any more, for if I don't have an example I can't make the necessary improvements. If you could take the job or leave it I start looking for another job, signing up with an agency is a good back up plan while you look for permanent employment it pays very well and easier mentally to do sense you don't have a threat over your performance all the time. You are on a unit that requires constant monitoring of your patients, chart as you go or chart in 10 minute increments so that you can monitor your patient properly. thats why I am a psych nurse. I only have one organ to keep an eye on and that is the brain and its mentality. In ob you always have 2 patients to 1 which includes the fetus.

Run away, run away!

Plan 1: Six months in L&D will get you a sweet deal anywhere with a sign on bonus. Find a recruiter now. You can start travelling while you look. Beat them to the resignation and remain eligible for rehire.

Plan 2: Talk to your old manager at PP and try to get a transfer back. Citing incompatibility with unit needs. I would not go back to postpartum if I have 6 months of L & D.

Remember, in any nursing job, the first 3 years are crucial. They gang up against you and try to get you fired. If you survive 3 years, you can stay forever.

A new manager can also mean people trying to negotiate power.

It happened to me. Six months after my old manager left, I beat them to the resignation.

Also if you go to HR and then also above your manager make sure you go in a correct order even if HR is scheduling the appointments, or you can also get written up for 'going out of the chain of command'...yes, it's true!:yes:

Like many have said above, it's time to look for another job. Once someone has you in their sites (improvement plan) you will be scrutinized, avoided, and consumed to fit the saying, nurses eat their young.

I know that the advice here doesn't sound very encouraging, and nobody wants to feel like they are whipped. I have been fired from a few nursing jobs and have walked away from a few, because frankly, sometimes work environments are just toxic, plain and simple. You will find another job, it will be a better job, and your life will end up being far improved when you bite bullet, face the inevitable, and take charge of your own destiny. There are essentially no commentators here who are encouraging you to stay around that place. Try to learn from your mistakes, get to a place where you can start off with a clean slate, and make yourself indispensable. Great things await, and a wonderful nursing career is just a decision away. Moving on can be a liberating act opening up a thousand possibilities that you never imagined. I think everybody here is rooting for you.

I recently went through the same thing. I am a new grad RN recently approaching my 1 year anniversary as an RN and in L&D. 30 days before my anniversary I was called into the manager's office on my day off. I was placed on a 30 day PIP. Most of the areas cited as needing improvement, I disagreed with. I was told that I can't do a delivery on my own, I can't circulate a section on my own, I'm not comfortable attending deliveries as baby nurse, freeze during emergencies and that I'm not a team player. The majority of that list is pure BS. I have been circulating sections and doing vag. deliveries on my own for 7 months. The only thing even close is emergencies....I don't freeze but there is plenty I haven't seen yet and need help on something new to me. I'm a new nurse....this isn't unexpected or unusual.

Anyway, I left her office devastated and humiliated. Until that point I thought I was doing a good job. I felt like I couldn't trust anyone I was working with. I felt unsure of myself. Not a good way to work. I made it my goal to work my butt off so none could dispute that I can do it. I did exactly that. I worked my butt off.

At my first weekly meeting I was told that now patients are complaining about my exams and lack of knowledge. I found that interesting since in a year I have never had a complaint and have had many patients compliment me on my bedside manner and knowledgable explanations when they have questions. Never was I told what I am doing right...it just felt like nitpicking.

At that point I started looking for a new job. I was called in for my final weekly meeting and told that they wanted to transfer me to post partum. I submitted my resignation as I was offered a job at another hospital in L&D making better money. I had to do what I had to do. They were never going to see me as a competent nurse. It was time to move on. I gave 3 weeks notice leaving myself a needed 2 week break before starting my new job.

It sounds like you're getting the same song and dance. It's time to move on. Leave on your terms not theirs.

Yes once the witch hunting starts it never ends. Someone likely said you were great and the jealous manager thought you wanted her job. They all seem to think everyone wants their job. What a bunch of prima donnas some of these managers are.
Amen. I worked for the worst most bullying and "my territory -I'll eat you before I let you near it" places in the state (even if no one wanted their swamp ridden territory) They bullied another nurse to the point of her being taken by ambulance to an ER with possible MI. It sounds like we went thru the same nasties, I too had in multiple "centuries". But you do survive and realize that the horrors of having endured was not worth it - unless your last patient whose life you saved would not have been saved sans yourself. Give yourself a hug - :yes:
Bingo, you hit the nail on the head re: saving patients. There were many times I came on to a totally mess and had to transfer patients to hospital from LTC due to the negligence and incompetence of the nurse on the previous shift. The aides were brighter than this dimwit but, for some reason, the manager liked her. Well I think the reason was her stupidity (no threat to the manager) and how she back stabbed her co-workers. I left the position and have never looked back except to ask myself why I put up with the abuse for so long. Just to show you stupid this twit is, she thought a pulse of 30 was normal.
Specializes in Oncology; medical specialty website.

I was in a different situation. I was being bullied (and I mean the true definition of "bullied). It turned out that three nurses (who up until that point I thought were my friends) started ganging up on me. The one nurse was someone I considered a friend. It got really ugly and petty. I was called down to the CNO's office where I was given an action plan and told that I had to sign it. I got up and said "I'm not signing." LOL...CNO sputtered, "You, you have to sign it." I said "No I don't."

The stress was so bad that I wound up going on FMLA. When I came back, I figured out what was going on, so I put my head down, went to work day in, day out and socialized with no one. I spoke only when I needed to. I did my job diligently, was kind and polite to patients and physicians. Eventually some of my co-workers tried to get me to talk. I would just say I was fine, and that was it.

Meanwhile I worked on my resume. I took a course that put me in a position to get out of that job. I told no one what my plans were. The minute (and I mean the minute) I found out I had the job I wanted, I submitted my resignation. I told no one where I was going...I was that paranoid about them trying to scotch my plans. I only told one of the residents who was doing a rotation on our unit, and I swore him to secrecy. The funny thing is the nurse who I had thought was my friend tried to cozy up to me and find out where I was going. When she couldn't get it out of me, she walked around acting all b***h*** because I wouldn't tell her. She was one of those people who always had to be in the know.

That was the only time I ever filled out an exit interview's questions with exactly what I thought of the place. I knew that there was no way I would ever be going back to that h*******.

Specializes in ICU, LTACH, Internal Medicine.

Well, now, with all that being said...

Are there any more people around who disagree with the fact that bullying, harassment and such do indeed drive fair number of otherwise good nurses with great potential out of bedside and into whatever grad school they can get into, just to get heck outta there?

... this is in relation to a recent topic.

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