nursebag

These are all such great & helpful responses. I should have joined AN a long time ago for advice. I will try to cover everything that was asked in the replies. 1. Going out of town - it has come down to this. When I can tell that I am about to be called in to work, I will tell my s/o "get in the car, we're about to go out of town for the weekend." I just feel terrible lying. But it is sad, even from my own perspective, that I have to actually consider picking up and going out of town to actually have a break. 2. Drinking - without saying too much, my coworkers know that I am not drinking at this time in my life :-) In a few months, I will use this excuse tirelessly! 3. I am a manager, but I am not in management above the nurses that are calling out, otherwise they would have been disciplined at this point. From what I can tell, they are not being disciplined because upper management knows they would just quit and find another job. 4. There is an on-call rotation. The nurses on the rotation are on-call every 6-8 weeks, which I find to be pretty lenient. There is no on-call pay. Management will not even consider it. 5. I am NOT on the on-call rotation. I've been told by management that I am on call 24/7 due to my position. They do not provide any sort of on-call compensation or pay my phone bill. In my experience, if an employee is expected to be on call 24/7, their employer pays their phone bill or purchases a separate phone for work purposes, but not where I work. 6. I have been a door mat. I just don't want to lose my job. I want to be there for the company and the people I care for. I just want to feel like I have a personal life and rights. Sometimes I feel like a slave to my job. Definitely tired of feeling this way. I hope to express some of these feelings to management this week to get some relief. I swear I'm not trying to be a "princess" that was discussed in another thread. I have worked day shifts, night shift, weekend shifts...all in addition to my management position. I have worked all day and left at 5pm, only to be told to come back to work and work 7p-7a, in my "condition" and with strep throat with a note from my doctor saying not to work for 3 days. So I swear I don't think I'm too good to work. I've busted my butt and I still plan to keep working hard. I just want to feel like I have a life again.

I agree with all of your replies. I wish it was that simple. There have been times when I have been busy and missed the calls/texts. I will find my phone with 10+ missed calls and text messages saying, "You need to pick up the phone." "You need to call me back." "You need to get to work ASAP. They are waitingo on you." I know I'm not conveying the situation very well. But when I find messages like this, I get major anxiety and feel like I HAVE to respond or go to work.

I have seen several threads about this, but my situation seems to be a little different. I am a unit manager in a nursing facility, and I work Monday through Friday. In the past several months, the med nurses/ floor nurses have begun to call out more and more due to the fact that they know their shift will be covered by myself or another reliable nurse that is a unit manager. It has come down to where the nurses that are on call are refusing to come in, so they never have to fulfill their on-call duties. I don't mind covering every now and then except for the fact that I have been called in so much lately that I am falling behind in my actual job duties. And I am not doing it for the money because for every shift that I work, I have to take that much time off later in the week to avoid making overtime. If I was being called and ASKED if I could come in, I would not be so concerned. But I recieve calls/messages that say, "We need a shift covered. Everyone I have called has said no, so you have to cover it." Really? I HAVE to? Why did everyone else that was contacted not HAVE to cover the shift? I'm basically not being given a choice of whether or not I cover these shifts. And when I have had a legitimate reason for not being able to work, I've been put on a guilt trip by my supervisors. I need time off and a personal life, but that excuse is not going to be accepted. I'm feeling taken advantage of, and I guess my question is...if you were in my place, what would you say next time you got a call such as this? I'm just tired of being the only person being told that they HAVE to come in, yet none of the other nurses who are contacted are being held accountable.