NurseAllen

I visited a family friend at a LTC facility and was shocked to find out that it was Casual Friday - every friday not just a one time thing. All the staff members were in street clothes - jeans and t-shirts (no lab coats or anything)- not corp. casual. I have several problems with this. In this day of superbugs and universal precautions, I can't see this being good from a infection control perspective. My work shoes barely make it in the door and my uniform hits the wash before i hit the sheets at the end of the day. Have we totally lost our professional identity? I am not saying that nurses should go back to starched whites and caps but a professional uniform that communicates who you are and what you do is not a bad idea, is it? Security - If everyone is walking around in street clothes how do you seperate the visitors from the staff / who belongs and who doesn't?! Does anyone else have a problem with this? More to the point - Does anyone out there support this practice?

AMEN NURSENEL!!!! I couldn't agree more. I've been working nights for 6 years (3yrs 11-7 3 yrs 7-7) And it is the attitude that "well, it's quiet here at night, everyone sleeps, how hard could it be?" All of you that couldn't stay on nights should remember what it was like. My last job - the pharmacy was closed ... you'd better hope you had all of your meds. This job (Step down unit) The day people have 4 or 5 CNA's we have 1 and the day people have this fantasy that since we are all sitting around having coffee at night that we should wash all of the 'complete care' patients. Meanwhile we get 1 linen delivery a day @8 am how much do you think is left @8pm? Not to mention that we get 3x more admits at night we have no clerk, we have no transport team, we have no housekeeping (you can imagine how much we enjoy emptying the trash and cleaning any messes) and we have to draw all the am labs ourselves on a 40 bed unit - and this is not even mentioning our routine paperwork! And all of this after maybe sleeping 4 hrs. There must be a better way!