Results from What You Hate Most about Your Job Post (5/25/16)

[PancakeSaturdays]

To all the nurse lovelies and studlies who shared your thoughts about what you hate most about your job -- thank you!!!

After reading everyone's responses, I would have guessed Inadequate Staffing” to have been in first place. However, after tallying?

Issues related to Management” easily took the gold.

As of 6/16/16, 93 people responded to the question.

(Drumroll….)

Here are the results regarding what you hate most about your job:

First place: Management (28) (inaccessible, poor communication, out of touch, lack of support, don't care, lack of planning, unrealistic expectations, trying to catch you doing something wrong, lying, not following through with what s/he says)

Second place: Scheduling expectations (23) (mandatory overtime, pressure to pick up extra shifts, meetings at inconvenient times, taking vacation time, being told what one can and can't take vacation time for, no break, shift duration, not being able to pick up an extra shift)

Third place: People stuff (20) (bad attitudes, lazy, negative attitudes, gossip, punitive environ, lack of communication, expecting nurses to know everything about patient, co-workers threatening to tell on you, low morale, CNAs that mouth off, favoritism)

Fourth: Inadequate staffing (16) (unsafe nurse to patient ratios)

(short staffed)

Fifth: (Computer) charting / documentation (13) (redundant charting, electronic medical records)

Sixth: Customer service attitude (10) (customer is always right, patients seen as customers)

Seventh: Unrealistic productivity expectations (7) (having to rush b/c of too much to do, risk of errors)

Eighth: Personal impact (7) (sleep during daytime, not being able to sit down to eat, PTSD, burned out, stress, emotional toll, feeling powerless, overwhelmed, no autonomy)

Ninth: Inadequate equipment/facility (6)

Tenth: Patients and families (6) (think they're special, rules don't apply to them, ordering nurses around)

Eleventh: Inadequate training (5)

Twelfth: Being undervalued (4)

Thirteenth: Inadequate compensation (4)

Fourteenth: Lack of safety (3)

Fifteenth: Poop and LICE! (3)

I'll be posting another question in the next couple of days. Keep your eyes open if you're interested in sharing your opinion for that one.

[AJJKRN]

Inadequate staffing is higher up on the totem pole than reported...we know we will have to deal with lack of staffing from TPTB until mandated ratios are made into law for every state:barf02:

[rearviewmirror, BSN, RN]

Thanks for taking an effort and initiative to make this into a well planned and quantified research/poll; very nice.

[PancakeSaturdays]

Thanks for taking an effort and initiative to make this into a well planned and quantified research/poll; very nice.

Happy to!

[Libby1987]

I'm relieved to see compensation low on the list, it's one of the things I have the least wiggle room with. The rest is where we do our best to make up for what we can't provide in terms of compensation, though it certainly isn't shabby either.

[kbrn2002, ADN, RN]

I am not surprised that the top complaints are people centered issues as how other people behave is totally out of our control. Not much we can do about poor management as who would we complain to? Complaining to the very managers we are complaining about would get us nowhere except maybe the unemployment line. All we can do about other peoples bad attitudes is to distance ourselves from it, which is not that easy to do with a smaller workforce.

Scheduling issues are also something we have very little control of, especially the mandatory overtime and constant begging from the scheduler to pick up more. Though this ranked higher than inadequate staffing they really should be linked together as there would not be issues with mandatory OT and constant bugging to pick up extra if there were adequate staff to cover the shifts in the first place.

I am really surprised that inadequate compensation ranked so low. All the complaining I see and hear about low wages and stagnant wages I sure would have thought that would be farther up on the list.

Overall great job pulling this all together from a bunch of comments. Interesting read. Thanks!

[Kssrn404]

I vote this to be the top problem. Nurse/pt ratios are way too high even in critical care. And "they" say there's a nursing shortage..... Hire more please!!'

[cindy coup]

Staff shortage there is too much of it I have come to believe it's to save money not because of call offs. But it can cause call offs related to stress

[amoLucia]

Thanks for taking an effort and initiative to make this into a well planned and quantified research/poll; very nice.

In the several years that I've been here, I don't think I've EVER seen a report-back from all those posted polls. Until yours.

Thank you for the info Interesting results.

[PancakeSaturdays]

In the several years that I've been here, I don't think I've EVER seen a report-back from all those posted polls. Until yours.

Thank you for the info Interesting results.

Hi amoLucia,

You're welcome! :)

[Axgrinder]

Nice job on this poll. Very organized and professional. I'm sure it was a lot of work. Thanks! :)

[PancakeSaturdays]

Nice job on this poll. Very organized and professional. I'm sure it was a lot of work. Thanks! :)

Sure thing!

When you're a bit of a research nerd, charting stuff like that is actually kinda fun! :)