Dean7

I think just read more about legal nursing issues to help keep you up to date. I am learning more about what my rights are and such. And although I need to myself practice this, don't be afraid to look around for better working conditions. Hospitals aren't that much different from running a walmart or whatever. Sometimes there can be such business-minded individuals trying to keep the budget that they don't care about patient safety or humane working conditions. Look at Walmart taking advantage of employees. Read up on nursing laws and lawsuits and read stuff on these forums about what people's staffing ratios are. Fish around for good ratios or move to a state where there a nurse staffing ratio laws. I agree, 16 hours are not a good idea. Usually by the end of 12 hours you are tired, and you don't want to risk endangering yourself or others. You might get so tired that you stick yourself with a needle (and get hep c or whatever). You might make a med error. You might end up falling asleep driving home or getting into a car accident if you drive, or get run over in the crosswalk because a car didn't bother to mind your right of way. Protect yourself because nobody else will advocate for yourself. Sometimes I wonder if nursing were more male-dominated profession if there would be fewer martyrs and staffing ratios and such might improve because perhaps men would be more likely to speak up to the injustice? Who knows. Not necessarily. I think women tend to be very patient and forgiving and maybe sometimes too docile for their own good.

Here.I.Stand, Thanks for your reply. We work 37 hours a week and receive a flat yearly base pay (in the 60's). There are differentials for night shift and years of experience. I believe that is overtime? They give us comp time, which isn't a check we get in or extra money we earn. Comp time can be used as hours that accumulate. If we are ten minutes late due to traffic or whatever, we can use ten minutes of comp time to avoid being paid less for working 10 minutes less than our 37 hours due to lateness, for example. Comp time can also be used if we are sick one day, and only have a few paid sick hours left, so we use the comp time to ensure we have a paid sick day if we ran out of sick days, for example. We can also use comp time to pay for a scheduled vacation day or for a doctor's visit day when we need to take off. I hope that explains it. We have been doing everything to manage time. We are rushing pretty much the entire shift. There's a ton of stuff. We usually choose to scarf down our food in five minutes to taking a full break, as we know that we will have even more paperwork and meds and discharges and admission notes to finish. It keeps snowballing.

Ruby, If you have read my post carefully, you will see that I have mentioned in my post that everyone stays after on average for an hour after the shift ends. Your reply suggests you have not thoroughly read my post. I also mentioned that there used to be 5 nurses on tele, and it's now just consistently just 4 nurses. I also mention about us just swallowing down food quickly and getting back to work, only get a fraction of our entitled break time. It's a case of the work load is too much and we need another nurse. Re-read my post. The reply almost sounded like something that I would get from the manager, so I sense bias and lack of sympathy for overworked nurses. Here is another quote of what I wrote in my orignal post: " On average, everyone stays after work an hour after their paid shift ends, finishing up paperwork. Nobody has been sitting around the nurses station talking or doing anything near wasting time. " I also mention in my post that the ADN already signs the comp time, if one of them sees us working late. We explain to the ADN why we need comp time. To clarify, the director is now asking us to also send him an email explaining why we need comp time, is a new loop he is making us jump through. Previously we simply explain to the ADN covering, and she signs it if she feels it is a valid reason. What's next? We will have to email the CNO and explain to her why we are requesting comp time? Next thing we will be labeled incompetent and troublemakers, an easy way to target us for standing up for ourselves. It's an easy scapegoat reason, for management to claim the worker is lacking time management skills when in reality there needs to be more staffing on the floor. It's an abuse of employees and immoral too. Reflecting on this situation, I think people who might have been managers lose sight of what it is like to work on a floor, or simply have not had medsurg/telemetry experience, been overloaded daily, and don't know what it feels like and how unsafe it is and how it makes for a quick burnout. The director of our unit does not come from a med/surg nor tele experience background, so perhaps that is why he is unsympathetic or reasonable and does not understand what we are all going through on this unit.

Thanks for your replies everyone. It has a set yearly salary with differentials depending on how many years experience and such. It is not per diem.

Hello everyone, First of all thanks in advance for any input anyone gives. I'm writing here to see if anyone else has experienced this, and if it's right or wrong or if anything can be done. Our director for med/surg is refusing to give us comp time. He outright said "I'm not giving any of you comp time, I am not signing for it. You are not efficient with your work, that is why you are not finishing on time. I was told we are giving too much comp time." I heard the director came out of a budget meeting and I guess the hospital is having budget issues, and supposedly they are trying to cut back by not giving anyone comp time. However, I see this as unfair. This is a tele unit, 28 bed, and we frequently have a patient load of 5-7 patients and they are high acuity (a lot of them require two people to clean them, a lot of them are very sick, need transfusions, oxygen, can't feed themselves, are on IV's, there are a lot on insulin, a lot of high fall risk patients) and we are frequently short on CNAs to help with the care (that or the cnas don't want to work together to change patients and ask for us to do time consuming 20 minutes long bed baths when we are already drowning in work and have a ton of meds and other things to do). Everyone is entitled an hour break, but usually we only eat for around 10 minutes and have to get back to work or else if we will have to stay after work for 2 hours finishing documentation. Not many people dare to claim comp time (time we can use that can add up to a paid day off) because we feel it will "look bad." Sometimes the manager has said "everyone should be getting their full hour lunch. There is no reason you shouldn't." Well the reality of the situation is if we take a full hour lunch, the other people covering for us will be drowned by taking care of not just their patients, but our patients as well (imagine being responsible for 12-14 needy patients including your own while covering another nurse on lunch), and we will end up having to stay late to finish up our paperwork. On average, everyone stays after work an hour after their paid shift ends, finishing up paperwork. Nobody has been sitting around the nurses station talking or doing anything near wasting time. Everyone has pretty much been busy the entire shift. Being busy the entire shift, taking only a bit to swallow down our food and then get back to work, we still finish an hour late on average, sometimes it is longer, 2 hours. I have heard we used to have 5 nurses on this 28 bed tele unit, but there are only 4 nurses. In addition, nurses have to take turns being the charge nurse, which adds additional responsibilities on top of having a heavy patient load. I feel that the director refusing to give us comp time is wrong. Is it illegal too? Should we go to the union (though I feel like the union representative will reveal who is the complainer because I have heard that she would tell the director who lodged the complaint and never keep it anonymous)? Or can this be reported to the labor board? The director also says we must email him to explain exactly WHY we are asking for comp time. It is not adequate enough to have simply the covering ADN sign for our comp time even if she sees us working late after our shift ends. I feel like this is bullying or a type of intimidation or a way to deter us from claiming comp time, as if we ask for it, he will make us explain the details, as if we are begging him for comp time. It's almost like humiliation and I feel that it is a way to question us and shame us and try to get us to believe "if only I worked faster or were superhuman then I could have done it all and been out by the end of my shift." What do you think? Also, does anyone here work on a tele unit with high acuity patients (a lot of bedcare patients, who can't walk, and such)? What is your nurse:patient ratio? I am feeling very frustrated and demeaned in this kind of hostile workplace environment. I feel not valued as an employee and if feels as if management sees us as work rats to use and abuse and that they just care about looking good as a director and keeping the budget good. Thank you for your opinions!!

You should try signing up with some agencies or just look for a new facility alltogether, or look for a clinic job. your workplace environment doesn't sound like it will improve. I once had to go on sick leave and remember one coworker who was nastily whispering to another coworker, speculating on why i was going on sick leave. Nasty b! Well she looks like a miserable and overall ugly soul so glad i'm not her! It's terrible to be abused by people who are supposed to be in the business of helping people get better. But i guess they're just in it because it's a solid paycheck, and not because they care. There are some good people and coworkers out there, you just don't seem to have a decent number of them at your workplace. I've also had issues of venting out a lot of my frustrations of work to my partner, and i feel like it has a negative effect on the relationship. Which is why I realized i need to start coming to this site and contributing to have a new sounding board for my frustrations. I also have tried talking about to another former classmate who is a nurse as well. It helps spread out hte frustration to several ears, so your partner doesn't have to hear about it constantly. It can be bad to hear always negative news from one's partner. Imagie if you heard him complaining every day about ****** coworkers. It's important he sticks by you, but we also need to realize to not dump all the load onto our partners and find different outlets. Ultimately your long term plan should be to put in applications elesewhere and make a plan to get out of that job. But short term for now, you need to ventilate your frustrations on nursing forums to let off the steam, while you are in the process of fixing up your resume and looking for a better place to work. Life can be really ****** and frustrating. Hope you find a better more positive environment.

You should try signing up with some agencies or just look for a new facility alltogether, or look for a clinic job. your workplace environment doesn't sound like it will improve. I once had to go on sick leave and remember one coworker who was nastily whispering to another coworker, speculating on why i was going on sick leave. Nasty b! Well she looks like a miserable and overall ugly soul so glad i'm not her! It's terrible to be abused by people who are supposed to be in the business of helping people get better. But i guess they're just in it because it's a solid paycheck, and not because they care. There are some good people and coworkers out there, you just don't seem to have a decent number of them at your workplace. I've also had issues of venting out a lot of my frustrations of work to my partner, and i feel like it has a negative effect on the relationship. Which is why I realized i need to start coming to this site and contributing to have a new sounding board for my frustrations. I also have tried talking about to another former classmate who is a nurse as well. It helps spread out hte frustration to several ears, so your partner doesn't have to hear about it constantly. It can be bad to hear always negative news from one's partner. Imagie if you heard him complaining every day about ****** coworkers. It's important he sticks by you, but we also need to realize to not dump all the load onto our partners and find different outlets. Ultimately your long term plan should be to put in applications elesewhere and make a plan to get out of that job. But short term for now, you need to ventilate your frustrations on nursing forums to let off the steam, while you are in the process of fixing up your resume and looking for a better place to work. Life can be really ****** and frustrating. Hope you find a better more positive environment.

Yes I agree with the other poster who said the manager could have created an anonymous presentation of this error so that everyone will still benefit from learning from the error, yet spare you any unnecessary spotlight. The manager herself probably has made a few med errors in her time. But of course wouldn't volunteer to humiliate herself. Does the extra humiliation really help make people learn more from the event, or just disturbs and upsets people so much that it does more harm? That is the question. And obviously you weren't making the mistake on purpose, so the extra humiliation by public outing is a bit too harsh of a response. Sometimes there is so much going on that similar sounding medication errors happen. In fact once pharmacy put in the med cart a med for hydro-something when the med was hydrochlorothiazide or something like that...so even pharm makes mistakes! Maybe look up a search on "med errors made" and learn that many others have made med errors..and that will make youserlf not feel like your'e the only one. Because you absolutely aren't the only one!!

Thank you everyone for your replies! It makes me feel better and am glad to have this because it was driving me nuts keeping it all inside. I need to be more active on this board. I will try looking for another position eventually. Just need to pick myself up from the disappointment of not getting anywhere from my attempt to do an internal transfer. But ultimately I feel it'd be best to leave that hospital all together..for a much better pay too!

Hello all, First of all I would like to say thank you for reading this post. I've been a new nurse for about a year and a few months now. I work on a Med/Surg floor. I've been working at a city hospital, the pay on average is about 10 grand less than all the other hospitals in the area. It was ok in the beginning, i've gotten my experience, but I can say that the orientation program wasn't very structured, it was just like getting thrown in and then later people asking "you don't know this?" when you want to answer "well, my orienting wasn't organized, so I learned things in an unorganized, scattered way." Anyways, i've had some issues with one of the personalities at work I clash with, another nurse who can be rude and in my opinion she is bitter. I have tried to schedule myself to work on days she isn't working, but there are always several days out of the month I have to work with her. It gets to me because she is a toxic personality, and there have been other nurses who hold the same feelings. So, she is one component of what makes it difficult working at this facility. The other thing is some of the patients at this place can be plain nasty and abusive. We have one patient who is very abusive. Management seems to cater to her, and not tell her that respectful behavior must be maintained by both sides, by the patient, and by the nurses. She is manipulative, nasty, rude. She has had psych consults but refuses to take psych meds. Coming home from this, I feel is not worth the money. I am left always angry and upset. She upsets all the other staff as well. She doesn't bring in extra money to the facility, she is not a special "VIP," she's just a rude patient and I don't know why none of management has stepped in and told her she must be respectful too. Not to be foul, but the situation reminds me of a cheap prostitute who will do anything for a dollar because she is desperate for the dollar and doesn't have any self respect. The staff is suffering because of this patient, and it's such patients and how it's dealt with that makes me want to leave the hospital setting and either work with children or babies because I feel they are more innocent and adult humans, in my opinion, unfortunately can be the nastiest living things on earth. I feel like my bitterness at work is rubbing off on my personal life. I have been feeling so numb this past week. I applied for an internal transfer at my work, and they didn't transfer me, perhaps because there have been many people who left the job or retired, and it would be too disruptive to have me go work elsewhere, as it creates new issues of having to hire a replacement to fill in the gap. I feel angry at this, and angry that I still have to earn by BSN (I had to get my nursing degree the affordable route, 2 year route, as nobody was supporting me and I couldn't afford anything else) to get past some of the HR online application filters that require BSN's. I have been angry at home, and I feel like a zombie and am just not being nice to my fiancee. And he says he is not so sure about things because I have so much anger in me that just ends up exploding. I think a lot of this anger isn't related to the relationship, but related to work stress, and I am taking it out on him. This worries me. I was never like this before. Sometimes I feel like I am going crazy and just want to quit and work at a doc's office or work agency for shorter stints and take off whatever time in between for my own time. I'm not sure what the next step is.Apply to work in an agency just to get fresh air and have a different environment to work in, instead of feeling stagnant and stuck at the same hospital. Keep applying to other hospitals? This is hard because i'm working full time and going to school full time, so I have barely any time for sleep, and even less time to fill out for applications. Should I look into maybe pediatrics or something where I am less likely to encounter nasty grown adults? I do not want to spend the rest of my years straining my back and getting abused by others. I have more self respect than that. The next thing is I'm going to need to spend money on a weekly psychiatrist session and money on psych pills. So, staying in an unhappy work situation is expensive long-term. Should I try looking for work in a suburban hospital? I also feel sick of this city (NYC). It's overpriced and full of angry people. I've lived here for a decade and while there are great things about it, I feel that it is not a good place for a high quality of life, and i've traveled all over and lived in other places so I do have a valid place of comparision. Any words of wisdom or just support or hugs? I really do feel like I should see a therapist because this stress is really getting to me and I have never felt so numb and alternately so angry before. I can't put up with the abuse and some nasty coworkers with bad manners. I had another career before and people weren't unprofessional or had so many nasties like this. Thank you for listening. It helps to just write it out and also read other people's stories on this forum of their struggles. Thanks!

If it went down to 140's over something, then I might not have called the doc. But have had docs give stat doses of BP lowering pills for people if their BP's are in the high systolic150's....which is why it was really weird for her to bother me about it... along with her misinformation that the patient was pre-hypertensive. Pre-hypertensive is when the range is 120-139, correct? That's what I saw on the nih.gov website. The whole episode left me shocked...and so angry. I'm covering my butt and doing what's in the best interest of the pt.... the end of the story is we found out that the ordered doses of BP meds actually were not what the patient took at home...in the hospital they were giving her a lower dose, which was why she was having high BP episodes. So ultimately her BP medication doses in the hospital needed to be increased. Thanks everyone for your support, makes me feel much better. Was venting too much with friends and relatives...and they're not from this field so they couldn't help confirm my feelings

Are you taking any vitamins and supplements? Make sure you take vitamin D-3, because at night you're likely not getting enough sun. Also make sure you take B-12 for energy, and a multivitamin. I find that if I drink coffee the entire night, I can end up feeling really depleted. Try to stick to teas like green tea or white tea, de-caffeinated, to keep you going plus the antioxidants will be great for you along with all the natural polyphenols. Hang in there and eventually try to look for a day shift opening. It took me a few months to get used to nights, and now I have no problem sleeping, but if your body is still not used to it, you definitely need to do the switch to days. Start looking at openings and see what there is. That will make you feel better like you are doing something to better your situation, and make you feel more hopeful. Try also looking at other facilities

Hello everyone, I've been a new nurse for almost a year now. I had an incident that still rattles me. There was a patient who had an elevated blood pressure, around in the 170's/90. The doc said to just re-check it in an hour, then she'd figure out if she'd give the pt anything to lower it. I re-checked it, and when I did, it was I think 159/80's range. When I was on the phone talking to the doctor, one nurse, who has worked at my hospital for years, was listening to my conversation with the doc. Then she all of a sudden said something along the lines of "now don't take me the wrong way, but should you really be reporting that blood pressure? That is pre-hypertensive and the patient is old." That is NOT pre-hypertensive value and the patient was simply in her late 50's. She knew that. Just because an elevated BP tends to happen amongst people who are middle-aged and older does not mean it is healthy to not treat an elevated blood pressure. My question is, was this nurse trying to mess with my mind? I did my job and reported the abnormal value, which is our responsibility at this facility and as a nurse in general. This nurse has had a history of making comments to me like "hah, you're a young nurse" and would try to make fun of me for always documenting things extensively. I think that she is a bit twisted and for some reason is trying to hate on me. I have always been nothing but courteous. When with saying hello and goodbye, and most of the times when I say hello or "have a good night," she never responds back. What do you think this was? The whole incident got me very angry. Though I stayed calm and ignored her because she was giving me incorrect information and perhaps encouraging me to work towards losing my license by not reporting an elevated blood pressure (if a patient strokes out...it will be my fault because I did not report it). Thank you for your feedback, I appreciate it

Hello there, I was thinking maybe nurse managers or people who know what goes on in the thought processes of hiring managers might be able to help me with this? I'd really really appreciate it! I'm in NY state and almost finished with my program (it's an Associates program , but applying for RN-BSN programs). I have heard there are some new grad programs that accept students who have associate's degrees. I am not sure what floor speciality to choose. There are options such as medical, surgical, ICU, PACU, step-down, ER. Ultimately, down the line, I feel like i'd fit best on an ICU floor. However, I know it's probably harder to get positions on an ICU floor (low turnover). My main goal is to get a job soon. I've heard med/surg has higher turnover and you get to learn and practice a lot of skills and time management, so that would be an ideal floor. However, down the line, I want to eventually get myself working on an ICU floor. So...for a new grad externship, should I choose a med/surg floor as my first choice for the externship, because having that experience might make me more hire-able? Or should I put an ICU floor as my first-choice, since it's what I eventually want down the road in my career (I like the low patient ratio and getting to know a few patients very well), and having ICU externship experience would make me (? I have no idea) just as equally or even more "hire-able" on a med-surg floor? I have no idea what would be the best choice... Any insight from anyone would be great! Thanks so much everyone! This website is a blessing.

Lemon in water. Lots of ice water helps. Try a spicy herbal tea without caffeine..it can perk you up. Lol or even a little hot sauce in warm water.Maybe even bring an ipod with you and during break or when you feel very sleepy, play your fav couple of songs. Also avoid eating tryptophan-containing stuff like milk or turkey burgers...they'll make you sleepy. I find that I'd fall asleep more when I drank too much coffee...maybe it's from the caffeine making me pee a lot...dehydratired-->tired! I've read somewhere that drinking a lot of dark liquids (memory not working now...polyphenols?) In coffee, black tea, etc can induce temporary anemia..not sure if that's "junk science" or not