mcl4

You have to go back to the basic fact and the fact it is an illegal substance. Most employers will not find it ok for a person to use illegal drugs or be involved with any other illegal activity.

I didn't decided on who, what, or when pot smoking should or shouldn't be done. Society or citizens in this country who elect legislators to create laws have done this. If you disagree with what you can do on your own time using illegal drugs, go out and try to change the laws instead of accusing someone that they are judgemental. I'm not a judge who can sentence a person for illegal drug usage, but those who can will not hesitate slapping you with charges that could affect your life in many ways. I'm always amazed at tactics in debate that are way off topic. The point is your are way off topic with the judgemental topics. It comes down to do you respect the law or don't you. Unless laws change, it is hard to argue it is ok to use illegal drugs imo.

[second, Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe that alcohol is "Illegal for anyone under the age of 21yrs of age Can you estimate how many teens in this country are partaking of alcoholic beverages? Third, I am concerned for all children, not just my own, and certainly would not recommend any substance to any Child, however when they become "Old enough to Die for their Country" I believe they also should be granted the right to choose their own form of relaxation, meditation, and yes even which drug they wish to choose. Are you aware that anyone can now walk into any E.R. and claim Pain at a "10" level and get anything they want, Morphine, Demerol, Dilaudid, if they play a little game called "This medicine is not Helping I need something Stronger." Until the M.D. gives them what they want!??? OSHA says "Only patient can evaluate his/her pain:confused: Is that OK? [/b] I do see the concern with alcohol usage with teens, but law currently prohibit usage of drugs for age groups over twenty one and there is objective criteria on when a person is no longer legally drinking. I wonder how you would explain to your teens that drugs are to be avoided when you chose to use at sixteen and I question why a person needs to use drugs in order to relax? People who go to an ER seeking out narcotics is another topic.

I guess my problem is that I have never understood anyone's need or desire to "get high"... To me it is an indicator of an underlying problem in their life. Maslow didn't include getting high on his heirarchy. I think the need to get high is to numb the pain of not fulfilling some of the higher needs that Maslow points toward... perhaps love, or self-fulfillment. Just my sober opinion.. ITA and question why one would want to risk their job and license using an illegal substance. In addition, as a parent, we lead by examples and it would be hard to explain to our teens why it is ok for us to smoke pot and they should not.

The question still has not been answer which would be is this against hospital policy to copy incident reports. This is not something I've seen done in the many years I've been a nurse by myself or others? This was not taught by the nursing instructors I was under years ago?

While I agree tardiness is a poor trait, I doubt the folks who do this are totally thoughtless. Employers should handle this problem by docking pay or writing a staff member up showing them their are consequences to their actions. As far as personal life is concern, there are those who are prompt and those who are not. Flexibility is also a trait that is important to have in life and letting go the small stuff including late guest or delayed meals. We all have our faults.

I am amazed at the suggestion nurses give back rubs in this setting. Do you really have pain management issues on your unit?

Did your telephone orders eventually need to be signed. My previous long term care position, we wrote telephone orders on a triplicate form where one copy was mailed to the physician giving the order which needed to be signed and return within forty-eight hours.

I would first talk with this coworker and state I never want to be dealt with in this manner in front of everyone. If this were to happen again, I would turn to my supervisor for help. If negative comments are to made in any situation, they should not be made in front of others.

That thread looked at abuse of sick time when calling in on a weekend. This orginal message is not the same.

My experience when supervising has been different and physicians in this area write out dates, if their patient has an infectious illness that has been treated with antibiotics or injury that would limit their ability to work at full capacity. If you has an injury, this physician would just write a one line note with dates of care without any limitations? If a person was returning after recovery for a surgical procedure and had limitations, there would be just a preprinted form with the dates of care? In reality, most times employees call in ill and they are not required to bring in a doctor's form.

[i think combined PTO is much better sinced most people would rather save their time for vacation and not use it (or waste it) unless they really were sick. Another idea is to offer end-of-the-year buy-out of unused sick time....personally, I would love to see that fat check at the end of a year! [/b] A policy at my former job was that you were paid out half of your sick time you didn't use at the end of the year. It was great to get an extra pay check near Christmas.

If you've seen physician note, most write a clear explanation on reason the person can not work, length of time they should be off as well as any limitation that might be necessary like a lifting/weight restriction when they return to work. Explanations why they can't work can are listed as injuries, recovery from a surgical procedure or infectious type illness. Most staff members do not have a problem with these type of physician notes given to their employers and sometimes they are necessary in order to collect sick time or short term disability benefits.

I agree with this message. Great point.

It is nobody's business why I call in sick, which I don't do often, and I would resent it as an invasion of privacy if an employer demanded and explanation beyond a doctors note for a prolonged absence. Just my opinion, VAC:( :( [/b] Well honestly, a doctor's note would give the full explanation, wouldn't you think? The problem with ill calls I believe happens more with long term facilites from my experience. What I notice works more to curtail a person who abuses sick calls was their peers making comments about their consistent ill call patterns. Frankly, the staff had little sympathy for these folks.

Your are missing the point entirely. The topic is for those staff members who call in consistently and possibly not even be ill. A person calling in consistently leaves moral down when others have to pick up the slack. No one is saying that if you are sick don't stay home, but for those who are abusing this policy, you are leaving your patients and staff to deal with your irresponsible behavior. I say fire them. It is too hard to depend them when it come to staffing the weekend shifts. You are wrong when you state that other professions/employers deal with abusers of sick calls differently. In fact, I think they take a stronger stance. Recently, an employee at my husbands job was to meet with the new owners of the pharmacy. She did not show up twice due to ill calls and the comment made by the new president of this company "well, we don't have to take her along" and she now is unemployeed. She is also a person who called in ill a lot over the years. I would say that this behavior finally caught up with her and it had consequences.

This was the policy of my previous employeer, but I was amazed how many times a person who called in ill, was reschedule to work the following weekend due to this sick call, called in ill on the rescheduled shift. My feeling is that if you have a person who calls in consistently ill without verification of an illness, they should be given a warning that they need to be at their scheduled weekend shifts and if the problem continues, the person is terminated. This would send a message to all staff members that abuse ill calls. The problem with my previous employer was they never let go the abusers of ill calls. It was a good deal of fustration for other staff since they more then likely had to do this person's job along with their own However, for someone like myself, who is ill twice in nine years, I feel that I should not be scheduled on the next weekend since I was truly ill. Fortunately, I never became ill and needed to call in on a weekend shift other then once and I had a signed note from my physician when I had a miscarriage.

Another thing is, I personnally am not comfortable taking a verbal order to start levophed when a physician has not even seen the patient. Unfortunately our attendings do not really see eye to eye and they regularly change the in modality of care of the week. so say you take a verbal order to start levo, and then on rounds the attending goes off, the resident sometimes will try and back out of assuming responsibility for an order, or make up an order that was not given. It is just better to have them at bedside when you hang the twentieth liter. I have to quantify the severity of verbal orders we are talking about here. As you can see above, these are not tylenol orders. Its stuff like should we start the Thamfor that pH of 7.01? Well, if my new grad does not know that you should not give Tham on a renally comprimised patient, there is going to be trouble. As a charge nurse, I cannot be everywhere and do everything. So I am actually happy to see the no verbal orders rule in place. I could very easily see the resident backing out of responsibilty, for that order, based on the nurse not mentioning the renal comprimise. Granted they should have asked, but they could get out of that also. Maybe that renal comprimise happened after the Tham was started? Anyway, it is kind of a circular problem, I just wanted to see waht other facilities were doing. [/b] I would be interested in a response to why certain nurses are going against the hospital policy and writing verbal orders given by residents? If I was in the position of being the charge nurse or supervisor, I would find this troubling. This isn't an area where some nurses may feel personally comfortable or not in taking verbal orders, but a specific policy that must be followed by staff. Why put your job and licenese at risk doing the resident's job?

The interesting thing, is that my most experienced nurses, know which residents they can trust and therefore continue to take verbal orders from some doctors. They know that they can get them written in the AM before rounds. Now, some of my inexperienced staff is trying to do the same and they are now getting hung once in a while, because they do not know who will own their orders in the AM. Our staff is very vocal, and are getting upset that we cannot take verbal orders, and the rest of our institution can. We need to address this issue, but I am at somewhat of a loss, in how to aproach it. If verbal orders come back like they were two years ago, we are going to have many nurses practicing without a license. So how would you rectify this perceived problem? [/b] Is there a good reason why residents can not write orders? With the shortage of staff, I see no reason why we should be doing the resident's job. I tend to think we enable physicians to be more dependent on us to do the simplist task as writing what they want done for their patients.