tipsplease

Mandatory staffing rations are a good start, but they are not absolute. There have been times I have had 7 patients and could work on the crossword puzzle on my dinner break; there have been other times that I have had 3 patients and not only did not get lunch but stayed late. One of these days, maybe after I'm dead, nursing administrators will figure out that acuity has to figure into the ratio.....there should be standardized categorization of patients by acuity and this should impact staffing grids and nurse patient ratios. If every manager had to work on the floor two days a month, this wouldn't be a question. Sometimes I feel as though hospital administrators WANT us to fail.

I really agree with roser 13. I find it humiliating for RN's to use improper grammar and misspell words. You don't find physical therapists or OT's doing this; I know a PhD nurse who uses double negatives constantly. This behavior makes nursing appear to be an inferior profession.

The only way to motivate any addicted person to change his/her habit/s is through motivation. Unfortunately there is a big school of thought out there that it is perfectly okay to be obese. As someone who struggles with her weight, the only thing that has really caused me to make a change in my eating habits has been the thought of having all the problems associated with obesity. How can I go to the doc and say my back hurts if I am 100 pounds overweight? Obese people don't need to feel ashamed; they need to feel empowered to take over their own care. They need to be encouraged that there is hope for them to be healthier and slimmer. I think that at a certain point people think there is no hope for their obesity; if they actually believed that there IS hope they might be more inclined to change their habits.

Don't know if this helps any, but maybe sharing my experience with an attorney friend will help you make up your mind. I was in an awful car wreck a year ago; car was totaled, I was injured (hit by a drunk going the wrong way on the interstate)....I had just started a new job and had no PTO built up; was out of work for a month and broke as a joke. My daughter's friend's mother is an attorney who supposedly had lots of experience in this area, so I hired her to represent me. Long story short, this was the nightmare from hell....it was very evident that the woman either didn't care or didn't know what she was doing or both.....but, after it was all over with, she was satisfied with her performance. This ended a friendship between us. I have since talked to other attorneys who told me she absolutely did not do justice to my case. So, guess this message is, never mix social with business.

I have been a nurse for a very long time; over the years I have found it necessary to detach myself from my patients (all of them). I am an emotional, touchy feely type of person; years ago I had a patient stalk me after i held his hand on the way to the cath lab. I thought nothing of it; I was young and pretty and bubbly and thought it was ok to do this; after that I realized that I am only there in a professional capacity, just as are docs. If the patient has unmet emotional needs, there are professionals to handle this. Think about it this way: it is inappropriate for counselors and other mental health professionals to form friendships after therapy; why should it be different for us?

I must confess that I picked my user name after a particularly frustrating day of fetching food and drink for a batch of drug seekers.....it was one of those days that I honestly spent at least 50% of my day waiting on these folks....my daughter is a server at an upscale restaurant and she makes more in tips than I do in wages. So there.

This is not only a moral and ethical issue, it is a competency issue. Writing papers is an integral part of nursing school, and if this person is either unwilling or unable to comply with this requirement, he or she should not be graduating. One of my very pet peeves is RN's who use incorrect grammar. Makes us all look stupid.

The worst part of all of this is that management is so worried about patient satisfaction that they never, ever stand up for the nurse to a patient, no matter how egregious the behavior is. It is very, very discouraging.

Just a thought.....if job security were the only reason a person went into nursing, he or she wouldn't last. You have to really love it to put up with all the stress and politics involved.

There are nice apartments near all the hospitals. Shop around using apartment finder; you usually get a 100 buck rebate if you use them. Also barter with the complex manager. Sometimes you can find an old price on the net; you can make them give you the apt. for that. I know because my daughters have been doing this for a while now. As for the pay, what you stated sounds about right for this area. It's awful, but it's also really hard to get a job in Atlanta right now. The places to avoid are Grady and Wellstar. Other than that, you should be ok. Staffing is pretty bad here; I have traveled and I can honestly say that the staffing is the worst here in ALL the hospitals. Be prepared. Good luck.

I worked for Wellstar Kennestone twice; once in the early 90's and more recently for a year and a half. The powers that be at Kennestone have no clue how to realistically manage a hospital. It's not just me who thinks that the management is incompetent; there is a rapid turnover of "exective directors" not because these people quit but because they get fired The powers that be pick people who have no common sense and who swallow whatever dictates are handed down to them. The good ones quit. It is not at all uncommon to have very ill patients in beds in the hall (example an incontinent terminal cancer patient) nor is it uncommon to get six admissions at the same time. There is no more float pool so if folks call out the standard reply is "do the best you can." Of course we all know how dangerous this is. If you mention the word "dangerous" however you become a leper. Maybe the ICU's are ok, but no other part of the hospital. I think that Piedmont and St. Joe's are your best bet. I worked at Piedmont; it's the only hospital I would say first hand I would be willing to be a patient at. I would never let my dog be a patient at Kennestone.

The person who mentioned being able to look up nurses on the internet riled me about something I think should be illegal....in Georgia all you have to do is put in a nurse's (or any other professional's) name and you get their current address. I am finally working at a hospital which only puts our first name on our badges. In the past some of my co-workers were stalked because of the Ga. board of nursing policy.

I am amused by all the preaching to the choir here. I have been an RN for more than 30 years and during that time I have seen trends come and go....here's hoping that the "customer service" gimmick is on its way out. Probably my most egregious experience with this was the patient who walked his Natrecor drip across Peachtree Street to the CVS to buy cigarettes on a regular basis. Management knew this but said we couldn't stop him. He was an HIV positive no insurance patient. They were worried he would give us negative customer service reviews after he was discharged. Every time I go to work I try to think about how I can leave the day behind me when I clock out. It really and truly gets discouraging trying to be a really good RN to very sick patients while having to be the housekeeper, nursing assistant, secretary etc. etc. Basically I think this would all be more bearable if the hospital administrations were even remotely supportive of the staff. The whole picture is absurd at best and things cannot continue the way they are going now. LEt's make The MacDonaldization of America required reading for everyone who turns 18.

Think about this: if you don't sign the hourly rounding sheet you are not following hospital policy. If you do sign it and have to wear a locator badge, the hospital can easily check whether or not you were actually in the room when you said you were. Of course it's obvious that this would be a very easy way to fire a nurse for false documentation. It's a lose lose situation. And oh yeah....this JCHAO emphasis on "pain management" has created an entirely new genre of medicine....just about every patient I admit has a pain doctor. The first thing I tell patients when I admit them is that it might not be possible to eradicate all their pain, especially if they are having surgery. Seemingly one of the biggest complaints from patients is that their pain wasn't controlled. What I think this means is that they were not completely pain free.