SuperCEN

I have 23 years of ER experience and cannot count the number of new employees I have precepted. This has all been without a pay differential and without any well organized way to document issues when someone is not cutting it. Through the years they have had a tendency to also give me the "problem children" who have failed with other preceptors--which is the situation I am currently in. In the past, when I have told management that this or that person just wasn't cut out for ER, they would keep them anyway and it would take a very long time for some of them to "error" their way out of a job. Therefore, I do the best I can with what I have been given and try to say little negative and do the best I can with each new employee's skill level. Now, with the current "problem child" I have been assigned to, management has decided to have a meeting with her and tell her that she is not performing up to snuff and to set a timeline for changes to be made or else an end to her employment. My problem lies with them insisting that I be present for this meeting. This is the first time that has happened. I am not management, nor do I get management perks or pay. If they retain this employee (which they usually do) and she becomes my co-worker, I feel this will create a negative environment for me. I have never gone into management myself for a reason--I am like the Wal-Mart greeter. I am the happy greeter and would NEVER be able to be the person firing or disciplining ect.... Just don't have it in me. I am so stressed and frustrated over this! I will be the one in tears there tomorrow. Am I wrong to feel it is unfair of my bosses to expect me to take part? They give me no tools to report the problems that I see, no compensation for the extra time it takes to train, yet expect me to take part in this "meeting". Am I being a baby????

2 stories--same nurse in my ER. First she had a blind little old lady on the heart monitor. She saw her flat line and goes running in the room and THUMPS her on the chest, The LOL (little old lady) yelled "Hey! What ya do that for?!?!" A lead had just popped off so she says "Never you mind!" and flees the room. Asked me to help her put an NG in a 40ish female with a GI bleed. She was talking our legs off, as she liked to talk ALOT! Suddenly the patient busts out laughing and stops her saying "I'm not a nurse, but I think that one goes in my nose!" I was holding the NG and she the water and while talking tried to shove the straw up the patients nose!

I just had to drop to part time so that I can handle the mandatory "on all" overtime. I work in an ER that sees 58,000 pt's per year and is a Level 1 trauma center. Full time nurses have been required to take 32 hours of "call" per month. I have yet to have a "call" shift where I wasn't told days before to just be here and have worked 100% of those call hours. we get $2/hour on call then overtime (over 40 hours) plus $1.50/hr. Part time requires 16 hours a month of call time. We have more per diem staff than full time and they are not required to cover call which essentially is used to staff the dept. All of our staff who does not need to be the family's benefit carrier has gone to per diem status to get out of our disastrous "call" situation. By the way, our ratio is anywhere from 4-7:1