bigbub3000

If you do face termination, get a lawyer and sue because you will be being made the scapegoat for the errors of many people, as mentioned by rlaffn and me and others. Don't take all the blame. Fight back. As for your husband, yeah, it's best, in general, to try to not burden him, although you do need somewhere to open up. don't be too specific here on the internet. Maybe talk to a TRUSTED friend or relative who will never share the story with anyone.

Scary, isn't it, that a doctor makes rounds daily (presumably) on his or her hospitalized pt and doesn't see that the pt is now on something he didn't order. Also, the doc who gave the TO should have sought out the chart of that pt to co-sign the TO the very next time he was in the hospital, but he didn't, apparently. Is the person who was supposed to get the abx getting it? I see this as part of a system error. You should not have to take phone orders in a non-emergency ever and especially not take phone orders (or verbal orders) at shift change. Nor should you be receiving a new patient at shift change. Your managers and dept. heads need to make this stop. If they won't, you need to just refuse to accept patients at shift change. You can do this without much ado by being unavailable to take report for a small window of time before you have to give report and count. I'd write it up as an incident that someone sent you a patient at such a terrible time. Did they even give you report? Did you know the patient would be arriving at that time? Did you know the patient had arrived? How long does shift change take? Probably at least 20 minutes if you have to count and give report. This should be a time when no new patients/transfers arrive, as you can't immediately go see them. Furthermore, since you were going to be leaving, how could you be expected to actually receive this patient and be responsible to do anything for or with this patient? This transfer should have gone to the oncoming nurse, AFTER she got report and counted. I'm glad the recipient suffered only a rash - which is still an adverse reaction but at least not anything more serious. Don't be too hard on yourself, as these things happen and this really was not all your wrongdoing. But you must limit your exposure and protect your patients in the future from this avoidable type of error. Just don't answer the phone any more, even if it's a doctor. Tell the secretary or whoever is calling you to the phone that you are in report and the caller can speak to the charge nurse or call back in 30 minutes and ask for the new nurse and give that nurse's name, since you will be gone. And seriously, if it's not an emergency, tell the person to fax the order. Have your fax # handy. make sure it's right. you will need your boss' support to make this happen without the caller taking your hide off. Or hand the phone to the oncoming nurse and let her take the call, since she will be having the patient and you are, for all intents and purposes, off duty. And they need to make the doctors fax orders in, not phone them in, in non-emergency cases. BTW, you should stop broadcasting your mistake. You've already owned up to it. The catty nurses you work with will just have to eat someone else up because you have said enough and are not going to say any more about it in their hearing. Right?

Can you post the questions here? It's sometimes easier to reply here and you might get more responses. Welcome to Nursing.

What does that mean?

What's your definition of "fanatic"? The families who wanted a private room in order to pray - were they expecting to not have to pay the higher rate? Or what if a sick person needed that bed? Could they not pray somewhere else - maybe the hospital chapel, which is, after all, designed for praying - or just on their relative's side of the room if they didn't want to leave him?

Ah, yes, the old VS under the hijab and abaya. So, uh, how did your Muslim friends feel about your teasing them?

it is painful to be ostracized. tolerated but not liked. used and taken advantage of but not have any real friends. well, i guess you have to decide whether to stay or go. personally, if you like the job, i'd stay. let the others leave. or just let them live in their world and you live in yours, however lonely that is. one thing you can do is stop helping everyone who you think is taking advantage of you. just stop doing what you believe is not your work. stop babysitting them, stop cleaning up their messes. just say no. no. just stop. surprisingly, you will find that they don't like you any better and you will also find that the patients are not suffering (i'd bet) and that the ways the other people do things are adequate. maybe not the best or the ideal but adequate. if you like, you can crash their potlucks. especially since you were invited and actually bought something to take to one. just go on into the room. silence will fall or someone will reach out to you and you won't be able to trust that he or she means it sincerely. others will ignore you or even leave and you will be all alone in that room. they will take their food with them. not to hurt you but it sounds like they just don't like you. try to figure out why. what, if anything, have you done or not done to bring about the current conditions? i am in a similar situation at work. i have resigned myself to just keep to myself as much as possible. there are some who i think genuinely like me, some who don't think they can trust me, right or wrong. they think this because i don't tolerate people disappearing on long breaks without letting anyone know they're leaving the area, i don't put up with work not being undone, excessive personal calls, the wearing of headphones by staff on duty, and other policy violations. that's why they don't trust me. there is the race factor, too. as a black male, i think some non-black staff have a hard time having to answer to me. and some blacks think i should favor them, which i refuse to do. i am as fair as humanly possible to all. there are some who used to hate me but have sort of come around, now that they see that i'm really not the bad guy, that i'm just a nurse trying to do the best i can. guess what. i don't really care. i trust no one, unfortunately. trust was destroyed in me many years ago on various other jobs, having seen how some people treat each other. i just go in, do my work, try to be pleasant, try to avoid trouble, and go home. i get my check, play by the rules, ask for no favors, work ot when it is ok for me, try to be accommodating but don't go out of my way to help. i'm tired of trying to be liked. sounds like you have the same problem. try to develop a more detached view of the friendships there. there are no real friendships. it's work. every man for himself. just stop looking for friends, for acceptance, for anything but doing your job and getting your check and keeping out of trouble. a lot of people are telling you to leave but there's no guarantee that there will be nirvana wherever you go. go or stay based on all important factors - pay, seniority, time til retiring, the known devil is better than the unknown devil, all of these things. don't just leave expecting that you'll find perfection in the new place. best wishes.

How is it that all staff seem to have the boss' phone number? I doubt I could reach my boss. I have to live with the Shift Supervisor's decisions, stupid or not. This person is new to the facility, knows very little about how things are done because the ones who trained her showed the same crappy, easy-way-out of problems that they have always used. Only one other SS has tried to show her the right way and, since the right way involves more work than the way the other SS's use, she, being a slug, naturally defaults to the easy ways that are unfair to line staff. When my rich uncle dies and leaves me his fortune... . Believe me, I will not be sharing it with any of the terrible bosses I've had in my illustrious career.

I think the OP was not made aware that Hurt was on light duty. So she could not have a meeting about that. I advise not responding to threats. Just look the person in the eye and say nothing and go on and do your own work. They will soon realize that they need the bucks and will come on in to work, most likely.

She's upset because they went over her head! Didn't give her a chance to fix it! To OP: let it go. Be glad the full time nurse took care of it. I think. It really does sound like much ado about almost nothing, but I do understand why you're upset. But try not to mud wrestle that pig. It just ain't worth it, Girl. You're not paid enough to worry about this stuff. Just do your best and take a rest and whistle while you work. Or something like that.

So where do things stand at this point, DLissa?

Sounds like a lawsuit. Very sloppy, so unnecessary.

The doctor I usually see does not keep track of labs. He is very bad about filling out forms, like for FMLA, too. One has to get with his assistant, without whom he would be completely lost, I think. She really covers for him, I think, and pulls his butt from many a fire - fires of being too lax and seemingly disorganized. Who follows lab results? Radiology results? Consult reports? Shouldn't the doctor who orders all of these things keep a little list in the front of the chart or a log book of some sort or something on the the computer of Pt's Name, tests ordered and the date ordered, and the results and date received. And each patient's chart should contain a problem list in the front, which gets updated q visit or q call. And/or a care plan of sorts should be in the front of the chart. Without one or all of these things, I think many patients and their labs and problems fall through the crack. As a patient, this scares me. What if I were not a nurse? What if I were just a layperson, trusting that my doctor has everything under control but he really doesn't know what labs he ordered, has no method established to make sure he checks results, in a timely manner, of labs he's ordered? Don't medical schools and training residencies teach them how to do this?

She's lucky she didn't get shot. She should have called the police and she should have probably reported suspected child abuse.

Why is she making you wait another week?