thcobbs

Hi everyone. (sorry, this will probably be long) Firstly, I'm not a nurse, but my lovely fiancee is one. She works the night weekend shift and I'm getting concerned about the level of work they are throwing at her. I'll try to condense this as much as possible, but feel free to ask questions. I'm coming here because I don't want any retribution onto her. Also, if you're in Mississippi, I'd really like to hear your responses. Working at a hospital in Mississippi(that's as detailed as I'll get on that), my finacee has had a constant degredation in working conditions over the past two years we've been together. This all started as nurses starting leaving her shift. First, they would have on average 4-5 nurses on staff at night over the weekend. This allowed plenty of leeway for easy and difficult nights. Then about a year ago, they averaged a maximum of 4 nurses per night shift. At this time my fiancee and I began to expect our lovely little girl. So as you can imagine, the 12 hour shifts were very trying on her. Now about 10 months ago, they had another nurse quit, it comes out that all the nurses are having problems with the nurse manager and get fed up. Now the really great thing is that their manager was on the floor for 6 months before being promoted to a managerial role. Now, my fiancee had to take time off because the baby decided to tap dance on her siatic(sp?) nerve. When she came back, she was limited to 8 hours at a time. Now after our baby was born, she is on an 8-12-12 schedule since she had to have emergency c-section due to HELP(advance toximia? ) syndrome. So, she's still on recovery. Now it's starting to get interesting at work. They now have, on average, a maximum of 3 nurses for the night shift. Each nurse has, on average, 5-8 patients a night. The nurse manager has made it clear that she doesn't plan to hire any more nurses for the night shift. Also, and this REALLY galls me, I've come to find out that they have an expected Labor Cost for the floor. And the nurse manager gets a percentage of the money saved coming in below that line. So, I see a major conflict of intrest right there. To make matters worse, they did hire a new nurse, who actually does a decent job, when she's there. It's come to their attention that the new nurse is the best friend of the daughter of thier manager.... And in the 4 months the girl has worked there, she's had more time off than my finacee has in 2 years. Now, one of the other nurses and my fiancee trade out Charge Nurse duties. And take care of patients at the same time. The worst I've heard was my finacee being the Charge Nurse and having 7 patients. I believe recently, they gave her nine patients. And now, not all their patients are oncology related. One was in drug detox and the other was supposed to be int the psych ward. We've come to the decision that at the end of her contract, she will be looking elsewhere. She LOVES the work that she does. She feels that she is doing real good in the world. And I hope she will find another job as an oncology nurse nearby. Now, I know I've been sporifice on details, but here's the question to all of this that I have. Are these normal conditions for oncology nurses? Is she getting the short end of the stick? And lastly, are the actions of the nurse manager(who does have an RN license) legal and in line with nursing ethics? You can probably guess my answers to the questions, but I want to hear from other nurses.