laughnsmile

Stated reason: More opportunity for growth, more experience to move up in the world. closer to home. Real reason: My boss was psychotic, railroading me at every opportunity, kept me on a constant evaluation process, slander, libel, and assault all going unseen/unpunished. Plus the new job really WAS closer to home!

Call me old fashioned, but I still say a year or so on a floor is never a bad thing. You get to use all those nursing skills you labored so hard to learn, and if you ever decide the OR is not for you, you still have that experience to guide you on to your next endeavor. Also, you will have an idea of how patients are taken care of pre- and post-operatively to bring things together. But thats just my opinion! Good luck in whatever you decide!

Well, as a followup, I incidentally reported her to HR... The very next week we had an inservice about intimidation in the hospital workplace (what in the where???!!! never!) Because of that I talked with HR about what i should do. Apparently they have to report stuff like that, no room for confidentiality, which I understand. I figured no one else witnessed it, since everyone was very preoccupied setting up for a total knee, and I told HR that. An investigation ensued, and, of course, no witnesses, and then HR actually almost accused me of making it up! I said, "I told you before the investigation that you may have a hard time finding witnesses if you pursued it, giving the circumstances, but you chose to pursue it. I just needed to report it for myself." Anyways, my manager stayed away from me for 2 whole weeks, but then the "stuff" hit the fan. I was pulled into office after office, trying to say I had been fouling up my narcotic wastage, giving me the worse evaluation ever received by any employee EVER (had to be in front of the hospital's nursing supervisor it was so bad!) and IN that evaluation (IN WRITING) accused me of screwing one of our orthopeds and leaving all the turnovers to my coworkers!!!! GARBAGE!!! All this with nothing to back it up!! I discussed it with my coworkers, and they all agreed I was being basically sabatoged, and that I should leave before they forced me out. Against my every fiber of a strong woman, I conceeded defeat, had surgery and had a different job before my sick leave was over!! HAHA Take that! Just as an added perk, i found out a tech also quit 2 days before me. Meaning she lost 2 out of 7 OR employees that week! He mentioned all her craziness in his exit interview, so they know it's not only me! Sorry this is so long, needed to vent that frustration!! BTW, my new OR is awesome!! It's so refreshing to be in a real OR with normal problems, lol!

I know there have been threads previous to this one regarding the hostility found in some of our OR's, but I have a new little situation that has been heating up my neck for some time now. My boss (nursing supervisor) and I have very distinct personality differences. Really the only people she likes are those nurses who dont think or talk much. She's really got it bad for myself and a couple of PACU nurses (one of which is an ex ER supervisor, the other currently a PT NICU nurse). We are all strong individuals, and while we are respectful and courteous, we generally don't let people walk all over us. There has been increasing hostility in the OR due to a hundred reasons I wont bore you with; you'll just have to trust me. I am constantly hounded by her nitpicking, called to the "office" to get my a** reamed for trivial reasons, and I'm to the point now where I go to work to get my job done, try to avoid her at all friggin costs, and usually I get by with maybe one incident a week anymore. It honestly feels harrassing. Last week was it for me though. The thermostats in the rooms are screwy right now due to the climate change, and we were doing a total hip. It was ungawdly hot in the room, so the scrub asked if i could turn the thermostat down. I told him it was already turned down to 10 o'clock (no temperatures marked on the dial, nor a temperature reading), so he told me to get the supervisor. I tried to get her attention, but she wouldn't enter the room, so i turned and instead opted to turn the thermostat off. (which we are asked to do often with this particular orthoped.) Within a minute she was in the door, grabbed me by the arm, dragged me to the thermostat and loudly tore me a "new one" in everyones earshot- for several minutes. (Including patient who only had a spinal, anesthesia, the other assistant, and the scrub. I was so suprised that she would touch me that i thought she was kidding- She has previously hit me (hard) in joking situations that I felt were her actual way of getting her feelings out on me, but never said anything because I'm so tired of her defensive attitude, I'm sure I would be written up for questioning her. Ugh. So after mauling the situation the rest of the case, and the weekend, I decided to take it to HR. After, I found out shes been suspended for 2 weeks for the same thing. Everyone quits because of her, no one really reports her for anything, and the other half stay and deal with her crap. I am staying AND reporting her, which I'm sure will make for a wonderful working relationship. What are your thoughts on this? Anyone have any other ideas for me??? I'm stressing and tired of going to work now, the morale is poor and it is a very high stress situation.

I work in a small hospital where we do a little bit of everything, but have been increasing the number of total joint cases that we do. When I was trained to the OR, I had to spend 3 of my many months training at a level 1 trauma center OR that had a large number of OR's and specific ortho teams and rooms. I was told there that they had the cleaning crews come in at night to wash everything down really good (walls, etc) so things would be clean as possible with the beginning of every day. My supervisor tells me this is a sacred cow. Any thoughts? Also the new orthoped's are bringing in these total cases that start after office hours (12pm and on). Is there any information regarding avoiding dirty (vag/I&D's, etc) cases in the same room to be used for the late total case? This may be a stupid question, but as I thought it was second nature to do these things, my supervisor now says that we can't provide a standard of care to these total patients that we cannot provide to any other patient in the OR. But we still only use the small rear door as opposed to the large main OR door after the total case has been opened to minimize traffic, and she requires us to wear those blue alien hats if we're to be in the room (even circulator). It sounds like she's contradicting herself, but wanted to provide some good hard evidence with my common sense explanation when she talks to me about this next. (She thinks I'm questioning her authority, but really I'm only worried about the safety of the patient.)

It's funny, cause I just read this somewhere on AORN's website. They recommended that the abdomen be done first, then the vag prep, then the cath, if needed. The reasoning for this being 1) splashage and 2) being able to manipulate the bladder for catheterization if the need be. They also "no-no'd" something that is sometimes done in our OR, which is at times when there is a second circulator "floating", they at times do the abdominal prep at the same time the other circ is doing the vag prep. They also said there is to be two separate prep setups and two separate glovings. One nurse in particular here has argued doing the cath before the vag prep, but just like AORN questioned, why?

I started working in my OR in September and noticed without exception that we use a smoke-evac on all our cases. Apparently some Dr's *****ed pretty heavily but due to our supervisors previous experiences we rarely make exception. (Apparently she and another scrub formed condylomas on their eyelids after a condyloma removal case which the hospital paid to have removed). Those doctors now have slimmer (but more expensive) smoke evacs

As primary I'll have as few as 3 and as much as 6. Today I started with 3, got 2 admits and had no unit clerk. I'm a little tired needless to say.:stone With an LPN we'll get anywhere from 6 to 9 and even if you only have a CNA you still might get 9.

My patient's roommate in bed #2 was reeeaaaly loud and obnoxious... the type of patient who answers the questions bed #1's doc is asking bed #1 (when was your last BM? Oh he had a BIG one yesterday!!!) Anyways one day I just got the inkling to ask him exactly HOW his HUGE case of cellulitis came to be. (His BLE were red, cracked and oozing). He got very quiet and red and told me that, well, he has a hard time scratching his lower legs since his belly sticks out so far, and sometimes he just has to grab what's close and scratch them. He said one day he was in the bathroom sitting on the pot, and got that itchy feeling again, and you guessed it! First thing he grabbed was the toilet brush. AAahahahahAHAha!!! He must not have seen how hard I was laughing cause he continued to tell me he scratched them till they bled.:rotfl: