kesmarn

Meanwhile, the CEO of one chain of nursing homes (headquartered in this town) makes an income of $28,000,000/year off of the blood, sweat and tears of people like us. This level of income should be ILLEGAL. It is money taken from OUR tax dollars: Medicare and Medicaid, for the most part. Strong government regulations and strong unions should make horror stories like this a thing of the past. I do appreciate your gentle humor in recounting this episode, but in reality it's more scary than funny.

JZ_RN, you make excellent points. "If you're new, go to Hell. If you're old, go to Hell." Well said! I'm an older nurse and I love new grads and younger nurses! They are our future and we should treasure and support them. Believe it or not, there are actually times when I'm able to help them with the ins/outs of our electronic healthcare records system and I'm happy to do it. But there are some nurses who do "eat our young," and it's a sad situation. There is also a minority who are hostile to older nurses, just assuming that they're going to be rigid and judgmental. Stereotyping is the enemy in both situations. I've also encountered patients who don't trust older nurses, younger nurses and/or minority nurses. They only want nurses who look like cable's "Nurse Jackie." And we all know her story! Again -- stereotypes. Hang in there. We need you.

@ jodyangel: Ouch!

Ooooh...now there's a deviously clever variation on this theme, hey_suz. Nice. -

And the devious part of it, caliotter3, was that they threw in a couple of 20 somethings terminations, too. I think to defuse the possibility of age-discrimination suits.

I hear you, tokmom. There are three hospitals in our area owned by this group. Two are non-union and one is union. There's quite a difference, from what I gather. Obviously, you can see I'm working at a non-union one.

Terrific comment, PennyWise. We all float as well, and there is also a float pool. But some days we're still short staffed because of all the firings, and also all the people who left when the firings started. It was a sort of pre-emptive move: "I'm getting another job before you do this to me too." Now we're really hurting -- to the point where admin is denying people their vacation time this summer. You can imagine how THAT's improved morale.

MJB2010, I agree. We're losing ground. People say negative things about unions, but it's beginning to feel as though things could hardly be worse with one than without! We're almost at that "we've got nothing more to lose" stage of the game.

Thanks so much for your thoughts, netglow. Believe it or not, our facility (besides firing all these people) forced all the unit secretaries to become State Trained Nursing Assistants! They were very upset about it -- understandably. Why would admin assume that people who applied for jobs that involve computer entry and phone/call light answering want to empty bedpans and check blood sugars? (And of course, I do know the answer to that....$$$$$) So now they're expected to do both jobs. When there's no STNA or unit secretary available, they force RNs to work as aides.

Zookeeper3, I think that may be part of the problem here. There are 7 hospitals in this area and 5 nursing schools. We are "over-hospitalled" and have an over-supply of nurses. It's good to know there are other options out there.

It's no fun, NurseCard. Did you have any trouble getting another job after your DON's meltdown?

I wondered about that too, scameron...

Hah! "Logan's Run" is right. Or "Soylent White." "It's made of nurses!!" Oops, you may be too young to catch that geezer reference. I appreciate your comments very much. Best wishes in your career!

Is this happening in anyone else's place of employment? Since the beginning of 2012 our 240 bed acute care hospital has fired at least a dozen nurses and a few PCTs (nursing assistants). Many of them have been over 50 years old and had worked there for many years. Those of us who remain don't have any info on reasons for these abrupt terminations. The nurses involved will usually be working as usual when they're suddenly pulled off the floor into the office and told to empty their lockers and be escorted out by security. Needless to say those of us who remain have stress levels that are through the roof. Most if not all of the nurses terminated seemed to be "good" nurses. It seems odd that someone could perform acceptably for 30 years and then suddenly become incompetent... Could this be because new Medicare reimbursement policies factor in patient satisfaction scores and young attractive nurses get higher ratings from patients? As an older nurse, naturally I'm worried.

Well, now it's 2012 and you've either passed your boards or you haven't. Either way, you're in the real world now. If you're in nursing, I suspect you've developed a method for researching the chemical structure, along with every possible side effect of every med you'll be administering for the day ,all done before your shift begins, so that you won't be taking 2 hours before seeing any one of your patients. (One of whom has a nursing student at the bedside 1:1, who presumably has the wits -- or not -- to notify you if something major is going wrong.) Oh, and btw, after a few years of doing this, you may notice that you too -- unlikely as it may seem now -- will start to waddle on your destroyed knees.Unless you have landed a desk job by then. Which wouldn't surprise me in the least.