oneinfour

Hello all! I am excited to share here that I just sent in my application to be a school nurse. I’m actually an alumni of the high school so that’s something else that I’m excited about. I’ve been an RN for five years in pediatrics, have my CPN, and enrolled myself in a School Nurse License Program at a local college already. A bulk of my experience is on a gen-med floor, that specialized in GI, endocrine, and behavioral autistic patients. I’ve also got about 6 months of pediatric float pool experience under my belt now where I see pretty much everything and anything. I’ve always wanted to transition into the school nurse world, and finally found a fantastic opportunity in a great district. One of the things I was apprehensive about before applying is the fact that I’m relatively young (28 years old) and also a male nurse which you don’t see too often in the school nurse world. I’m very confident in my experience and qualifications for this job, and this district has two other school nurses in the district covering the other schools so if I were to get the position I’m not worried about learning on the fly with no guidance from other healthcare professionals in the district. Any tips for me going through the interview process? Is the fact that I’m a male nurse something that may affect my standing as a candidate working with the adolescent age group, with female students in particular? One of my colleagues who I was discussing these concerns with told me when she shadowed a school nurse that was a young woman said that the same concerns I had exist with males coming in, and it was handled by getting chaperones of other faculty members that you ask the student if they are comfortable with should you have to deal with a sensitive health concern of the opposite gender. Anyone have experience with these situations and how you handle them with your students? Thanks for any feedback!

Thanks for your advice on this situation. We’ve known that we couldn’t keep working together forever so we’ve been enjoying the opportunity to be able to work together while it’s lasted. We have ultimately been understanding that this does affect the workplace in a negative way because accommodations have to be made if you allow it to continue. However, everything was fine up until our manager found out about us, and since then everything has been made very public in negative ways that now I feel like one of needs to quickly find a place to transfer away from the unit just to spare everyone on the unit from the drama that has been created. I have an interview with another manager within the hospital right before our meeting with HR, and as long as that goes well my intentions going into the HR meeting will be to have HR help facilitate that transfer as soon as possible just to put an end to all of this given everything that has happened so far. I’m just hoping this whole situation hasn’t gotten so public that it affects my ability to get the job on the new unit in a transfer.

At this point I'm trying to figure out what the best angle is given everything that has happened. Our aim before she announced those things openly at huddle was to gain more insight into the policy. We did look at the policy when we first started dating, and the language of this policy states that employees are expected to report the relationship if one person is in a supervisory role over the other. We concluded that since we are both staff nurses on the floor, there wasn't a need to report anything as there was nothing that was indicated in the policy for employees at the same level and we preferred to keep our relationship under wraps. It's also worth noting that the charge nurse role in our hospital is not something that you get paid any extra money for, and it isn't something you apply for, they are simply responsibilities that are expected of you after you've been a nurse for 2 years on the unit. So those are definitely some points we are going to go into the HR meeting with to get more clarification on. Also in our discussions with our manager we proposed to be able to stay on the unit, same shift and same weekend but to make sure we schedule ourselves 5 days apart and those would be the days I could fulfill my charge responsibilities with no conflict of interest. She was not receptive to the idea. We also voiced to her we felt we were being rushed into a transfer to another unit, and I had actually applied to other hospitals. We asked for some time where our schedules could be left alone for up to two schedules (we would still schedule ourselves 5 days apart due to the charge nurse component) while we conduct searches for jobs and find one that was the best fit for one of us. After voicing that concern we scheduled a meeting with HR and decided it was best not to continue the discussion of anything further until then for our own best interest. We just feel a little bothered that there has been no HR presence through all of this considering the weight of what's being asked of us through all of this so far. Also, would you take the harassment angle in regards to her actions discussing our relationship openly in staff meetings to incite concern and disapproval of our coworkers? It has definitely been way more difficult working on the unit since that occurred as we have had many uncomfortable interactions with coworkers and it's all anyone seems to want to talk about with us now. It's been a huge distraction while we've been trying to do patient care and I would be lying to you if I told you I wasn't slightly concerned the whole thing was affecting my patient care. My concern is we don't want to go into this meeting being perceived as trying to overplay this incident just to trash our manager. However how everything has been conducted, it feels as though that she's been using our relationship to force me in particular off the unit by not willing to be accommodating and not having any HR presence in her interactions with us up to this point, as I had to ask her for our HR generalists name after the third meeting regarding this situation with her.

Hello all, I'd like some guidance on a situation I find myself in. I've been dating another nurse on the floor for 4 months now, and a few weeks ago our manager found out. She approached us and told us we would either have to switch to opposite schedules as we both work the same shift on the same weekend rotation, or one of us has to transfer off the unit. She cited that since my occasional charge nurse responsibilities every schedule are a supervisory role (we are responsible for making assignments for the next shift and delegating admissions to the floor) and it is a conflict of interest on those days (I am typically in charge 4-6 shifts out of 18 shifts on a schedule). After several discussions with our manager regarding our relationship on the floor we grew concerned that her approach to this whole situation was not in our best interest. We informed her of that via email and told her that we did not feel comfortable continuing the discussion about the situation until we sat down with HR to gain their insight on everything. The same day we sent that email we came to work that evening and were informed by several coworkers that our manager conducted a huddle in main desk in the middle of the unit and announced us by name that we were in a relationship, and informed all the staff there that I was not to be in charge while we worked together. She then proceeded to tell them that this situation could lead to them getting floated, not getting call-offs, or even getting mandated. We were also informed by a nurse shortly after our manager approached us about our relationship that she had brought our names up in a Council meeting and was asking questions about our dynamics and behaviors on the floor. Our HR meeting is in a few days. How should I proceed going into this meeting?

I've been a male peds nurse on a general med surg unit for over 4 years now. When I first started on my unit as a new grad, I took care of a teenage male cystic fibrosis patient that preferred having male nurses take care of him. So myself and the other male nurse that works on the unit were his primary nurses whenever he was admitted, and we all have common interests in video games and such things that younger guys do, so during our downtime we would bond with him by playing video games. About 2 years ago he was transitioned over to the adult CF unit, and he makes contact with us to come visit him whenever he gets admitted, which is pretty difficult because I can't leave the unit for extended periods of time while I'm working to visit and play video games like he wants. I wanted to know your thoughts on setting up a day where him and his primary nurses from his old pediatric unit meet up to go bowling. Is this crossing the professional patient relationship? I go back and forth on it with this situation. Welcome to any and all insights and guidance on this situation!