I am looking for some insight into retaliation acts by employers.I am a RN in a ICU setting at a major teaching hospital.I have been a resource to my entire unit.I received a promotion only weeks ago.I received a email from my unit manager only hours before she fired me "thanking me" for my dedication to the new nursing staff. I have never been written up, never a verbal warning.My evaluations have been excellent in all my years at this hospital. Until this past month....
I voiced my concerns over some incompetency acts performed by a coworker-nurse. These were acts that were not merely mistakes...they were acts that could have resulted in patient death. I tried to set a meeting with my nurse manager to discuss this nurses incompetent level of function...and I was met with a date to come in for a termination meeting...mine!
This nurse was the nurse managers best friend and recently was her assistant manager.She had done office work for years and had not taken care of any actual patient in years. When she opted to go back into staffing she "refused " to "accept" any orientation....and so she was left to learn by trial and error.In a ICU setting...thats just wrong!Othernurses had complained to the nurse manager to no avail...but I am a lil different.I have a history of being a strong patient advocate and I had told the nurse who was functioning incompetently that I was left with no choice but to go to our risk management dept re: her unsafe pratices.Hours later....I was "fired" for an alledged documentation error. This same kind of documentation error has resulted in no disciplinary action for other employees.Secondly ...my chart had been altered after I left...so I actually never had a documentation error.I dont know what to do. I have been a model employee for years.I have asked for dispute resolution....but they keep postphoning the dispute resolution hearing. What actually happens in a dispute resolution hearing? Are they a sham?Do you have any advice? I feel like I have been incredibly niave.Like I should have seenit coming...but didnt.
So...does the ANA require each state to be actively involved in "X" number of legislation lobbying? See...on this stuff....I just "dont know".
I don't know for sure, but I've never heard of ANA or their affiliates doing any substantial legislative lobbying. If they have ... it hasn't been very successful. For example, all other attempts to pass ratio laws in other states have failed.
There's actually a war going on ... so to speak ... between the ANA and CNA. The California nurses union broke off from ANA years ago because they felt they weren't doing enough. Now CNA is trying to organize in other states. CNA recently won an election at an Illinois facility where the RN's decided to dump the ANA affiliate and go with CNA's organization there. Similar battles are happening in Hawaii and other states.
It's controversial, but some RN's are getting tired of the ANA and their affiliates maintaining the status quo.
wow....the CNA can supercede the ANA? I wonder how the CNA "decides" which states to attempt to intervene in? I mean....at this point.....unless nurses are like me and "record" these fiasco's....its really big bussiness versus the nurse.
wow....the CNA can supercede the ANA? I wonder how the CNA "decides" which states to attempt to intervene in? I mean....at this point.....unless nurses are like me and "record" these fiasco's....its really big bussiness versus the nurse.
I can't speak to what happens in other states. But I do know that in California CNA usually comes in when a group of nurses at a facility decides it's time to organize. If CNA feels enough RN's are interested, they come in and start organizing for an election where a majority of RN's have to vote the union in.
This happened at a facility at my area where, actually some very conservative RN's who weren't actually pro-union organized the effort. Even though they weren't crazy about CNA, management really upset them when they refused to give the RN's a basic cost of living raise but decided to pay some of the managers as much as $500,000 a year. That's pretty much the reason why the RN's voted for the union, even though not all of them were necessarily pro-union.
Hmm...what kind of things did you guys face when you were trying to organize.I have heard that HCF's will threaten to terminate nurses who vote a union in....has the CNA faced the same thing in these other states?
Hmm...what kind of things did you guys face when you were trying to organize.I have heard that HCF's will threaten to terminate nurses who vote a union in....has the CNA faced the same thing in these other states?
Again, I can't speak to other states. But the election at the facility in my area was pretty nasty. Management did pull a lot of stuff that probably was illegal. I'm no lawyer, but I'm pretty sure it's illegal to threaten termination for voting union. Nevertheless, it does happen anyway. Although I don't know of anyone who actually lost their jobs because of union activity. But, keep in mind, I live in California which is a pro-union state, Texas is not. So it could be different there.
But, when all was said and done, 65 percent of the RN's voted for the union, and they got the best pay raise and benefit package in the area. All the other hospitals had to raise their pay to try to compete. So, in the end, it was worth it.
Specializes in ub-Acute/LTC, Home Health, L&D, Peds.
This is off the union subject but, I figured out a long time ago it was very difficult to be a nurse and work for a business. We have very different bottom lines!! Also I figured out that the businesses don't really want the most qualified nurse...just the one they can pay the least! I was "laid off" my full time job with a home health hospice. I spoke with the Administrator and she was telling me about the financial difficulties the non-profit co. was having. Then she said to me "you are the highest paid LPN we have." I said "I hope so since the other 2 are both new grads and I have been a nurse for over 15 years!" But ya know guess who got laid off...me!! And I know for a FACT the other 2 LPN's working there had comitted several mistakes and I know one was MAJOR! But I the one with experience and no mistakes was the one they laid off! That was 2 years ago. I have been a nurse for a long time now...over 15 years and now I stay home with my little boys (happily I might add), and I have serious doubts about going back to the profession I love and the only one I have ever had or cared to have. I have had many bad experiences with management/admin. not wanting to see or hear anything that is a problem. I hope so much that this will change but I think as long as money is their bottom line and patient care is our bottom line these problems will continue.
this is off the union subject but, i figured out a long time ago it was very difficult to be a nurse and work for a business. we have very different bottom lines!! also i figured out that the businesses don't really want the most qualified nurse...just the one they can pay the least! i was "laid off" my full time job with a home health hospice. i spoke with the administrator and she was telling me about the financial difficulties the non-profit co. was having. then she said to me "you are the highest paid lpn we have." i said "i hope so since the other 2 are both new grads and i have been a nurse for over 15 years!" but ya know guess who got laid off...me!! and i know for a fact the other 2 lpn's working there had comitted several mistakes and i know one was major! but i the one with experience and no mistakes was the one they laid off! that was 2 years ago. i have been a nurse for a long time now...over 15 years and now i stay home with my little boys (happily i might add), and i have serious doubts about going back to the profession i love and the only one i have ever had or cared to have. i have had many bad experiences with management/admin. not wanting to see or hear anything that is a problem. i hope so much that this will change but i think as long as money is their bottom line and patient care is our bottom line these problems will continue.
katfishlpn.....didnt they have to "lay you off" by seniority?how did they get around that...what explanation did they provide.??
see.....this is where i get really untrusting with hcf....examples like this.. :deadhorse :deadhorse
Hey, I know how you feel; I really hope it works for you, but I am very cynical. I do not doubt you for an instant, but I am all too familiar with their highly deceptive strategies. In the beginning I was delighted by the Management telling obvious lies, I would rub my hands and think that huge inconsistency will act in my favor: it just never did. At my Grievance hearing my former Manager tried describing the pattern of harassing phone calls she insisted I had made by saying: "sometimes her phone calls to me would total five hours in one day." Outrageous you say, unbelievable? That is a massive stretch of the imagination, an amount of time tied up on the phone that simply couldn't feasibly be accommodated in any functioning working unit of the Hospital by an ordinary employee let alone the Nurse Manager of a busy OR. Was this incredulous lie her downfall? No, HR just said: "really?" And we moved on with the Circus!
At one point during a phone call to my home, which my Manager initiated, a workman knocked the kitchen phone off the wall and hung it up roughly. It was a call made during my forced time off without pay with the sole purpose of deliberately baiting an understandably worried, obviously targeted employee into an argument that could be used to justify termination. There were many phones in my rambling old house, I was using one in an upstairs back room, but the one in the kitchen protruded from the wall just beyond a very narrow passageway: it had been side swiped on several previous occasions. However, now it looked suspiciously like I had slammed the phone down on my boss at the end of our call, to this day it remains the most damming strike against me. Although I would try to offer my logical account of what had happened, they had their flimsy excuse and it would prove a useless endeavor to fight them.
At first I had not realized what had happened and I erroneously assumed that it was my OR Manager who had slammed the phone down to run to a stat in the OR; I had jolted the phone away from my ear in response to the bang and a few seconds latter there was a dead line? I wasn't really suspicious and I didn't question her motives as it had seemed so insignificant at the time. But, at my Grievance hearing my Manager kept going on about why hadn't I called her back. It was the end of our conversation and I had assumed that she hung up abruptly on me for a good reason. It was some time later that one of the workman said something to me, but by that time it was too late to call back. I wouldn't have expected my boss to be still in the OR as she had usually left by 3:30. It was only when a courier hand delivered a very intimidating note to my door that I realized they now had the excuse they had been seeking to fire me.
This one misunderstanding turned into several unspecified occasions when my Manager insisted I had slammed the phone down on her in a rage. As time progressed like Pinocchio's nose the number of instances grew until, by my Arbitration hearing, the story had changed to where I had called my Manager to rant and rave, slammed the phone down and then called her back specifically to slam the phone down on her again! At first my Manager had said that she had called me, then inexplicably it was from the office of the Director of Surgical Nursing on the other side of the Hospital. It was highly suspicious that any such routine call about a subordinates work schedule should be made from the Director's office unless the express purpose was deliberate entrapment. This devious lie allowed my immediate OR Manager to enlist the Director as a witness to the alleged "screaming" coming from the phone. I didn't even know the phone number of the Directors office and I also would have had no way of knowing she could be reached at that number anyway; another unexplained inconsistency that was ignored. I doubt that the call truthfully emanated from that particular office, but insisting that it did provided the unassailable witness: the Director of Surgical Nursing.
I was absolutely incredulous when the Director of Surgical Nursing lied to try and pretend that I was literally screaming into the phone loud enough that she had overheard the entire conversation so clearly she knew what I had said and could positively identify me as the caller from the other side of her office! The local phone company thought that this claim was really ludicrous and they even wrote me a statement of support regarding the basic limitations of standard phone equipment! At first I was so shocked I kept trying to make sense of what she had said, perhaps she heard someone else entirely; I just couldn't believe anyone of her high status would lie. Just referring to this false accusation about screaming into the phone as a "blatant lie" was twisted into yet another serious charge against me: I was daring to call the Director of Surgical Nursing a liar! When one cannot even defend oneself by calling a false accusation untrue, then we have completely suspended our free speech rights under the US constitution! Much latter on I discovered that this Director of Surgical Nursing, who oversaw all of our ORs, ICUs, PACU etc, had elevated her lying skills to a new art form and was entirely capable of Oscar worthy performances when she really got going.
There were other major inconsistencies I attempted to raise like why someone who was suffering from a relentless campaign of phone harassment never contacted Security, never attempted to trace or tape record calls, never confronted me in front of witnesses to insist that the calls must stop or bothered to document this insistence in a written warning to me. Then this consistently threatened OR Nurse Manager shifted the days and location of my work assignments so that I would be assigned to her OR during the exact same times when she would be at work. Normally I covered mostly weekend shifts in another OR complex. That was like inviting her own stalker to dinner! Genuinely threatened people to do choose this course of action, it made no sense, but did anyone except me question it? NO!
The whole tenor of Management's case against me was strict subversion of the truth, nothing at all in writing so that they could continuously manipulate the story and keep the targeted employee guessing. The so called "letters of outrage" they had managed to bully out of three of their new office staff were so pathetic they had to be kept from me at all costs, with not even one direct quote revealed during testimony. At Arbitration the subjective feelings of these employees were so obviously contrived and ludicrous that they couldn't possibly have been taken seriously by any sane individual. I felt awful for them both as I imagined they must have been coerced into standing by their original solicited letters, but they were genuinely trying to be truthful. There were times when the lies were so inconsistent, so obvious and so outrageous I wanted to split my sides laughing, but despite all of the lies they always won out.
Then at my Arbitration hearing there was the concocted harrowing tale told by the Director of Surgical Nursing as she deliberately lied under oath. The Director described how I had got in her face, three inches in front of her nose and started screaming threats. I wanted to say that if I had done this the stench of her pancake makeup would have made me puke, but I refrained from making the comment. Three office staff including her new secretary would have been within easy hearing range; the two who testified before her never heard a thing or mentioned this "incident." The Director said that one was right next door making copies, adding that it was a very loud copy machine! Hospital policy would have compelled one of these three staff to immediately call security to secure the scene and have me escorted off the Hospital premises, but she failed to explain why no one had done that. She was so completely terrified by my threats she did nothing, she had said nothing to anyone, she hadn't told my OR Manager and she had documented nothing in writing. During my Grievance hearing and an EEOC Mediation she hadn't mentioned the incident at all.
Now she was raising this issue for the first time over 15months after I was fired. She said she was so terrified by my treats that at the end of the day she had asked Security to walk her to her car! When asked if there would be any record of her call to Security that day she hastily said: "sometimes they are right outside when you need them." It was all such a completely obvious fabrication that even the Hospital Lawyer must have been cringing in his seat, worried about the implications of their most credible witness lying under oath. Did all these blatantly obvious leis destroy the credibility of the Hospital's most powerful witness or cast suspicion on the motivations of Management? No the most theatrical part of her testimony was documented by the Arbitrator in his final ruling as "not credible," while her less outrageous lies were still accepted into the testimony as irrefutable facts! No one, including the Arbitrator, considered the possibility that this supported my allegation of retaliation. No one ever questioned her motivation or why she had decided to conspicuously lie under oath to deliberately victimize a subordinate. It was an extension of the sense of entitlement all Managers felt at that prestigious institution: they were unquestionably above the law.
The important point here is that these hearings are predetermined ahead of time and they are notoriously grotesquely unfair. The HospitalManagement knows exactly what their desired outcome will be: they control the hearing; they control the agenda; They control what you will have access to; they control what you can present in your own defense; they control who will be permitted to testify and what they will be allowed to present; they control the entire focus of every single hearing. After each hearing or during an investigation they control the interminable delays in the scheduling and the protracted delays in reaching a final conclusion or decision, which despite your best efforts are always inexplicably in their favor. The entire process is a complete farce, indeed just a cruel manipulation of the system that supports unconscionable corporate greed in healthcare. These types of hearings and investigations are not to reveal the truth. Their purpose is to give the impression of legitimacy to a completely bogus series of meetings.
If you do not buy into their relentless program of deception and agree to the meetings it counts against you as they are then seen as genuinely trying to resolve the issue while you are purely being obstructive. As you have now experienced the "hearing" is merely a mud slinging exercise where you are outnumbered by powerful Managers intent on degrading, humiliating and intimidating you into silence. Your original complaint of serious incompetence and the potential for harming patients is drowned out by the Managerial heavyweight team of accusers trying to add gravity to the painfully insignificant technicality they are using to railroad you. There is no due process until you go to court.
Each meeting helps them to stall for time and postpone the only type of hearing they are in the least bit worried about: facing you in a court of law. They are going through the motions as if they are holding genuine hearings and conducting a thorough investigation it makes them look good and gives a false impression to external public agencies. Believe me it works really well for them. As a follow on from the chain of command progression all of these tedious and completely, albeit futile, proceeding are meant to be explored thoroughly first long before resorting to any legal action or outside reporting to public agencies. Now you can understand why stalling for time is so incredibly valuable to them as they manage to outdistance the statute of limitations on bringing charges. Each of their unjust erroneously failed hearings and "abandoned for lack of evidence" investigations makes your case look worse and worse.
I am now convinced that copious documentation and speed are the best answer. Keep sending letters that always request a written reply. They will be too concerned about being caught out in their charade to write back, but the conspicuous lack of replies is a tangible piece of evidence in itself. Document what they say to you, even when it is a false accusation; sometimes it is the only way to record lies that they may plan to manipulate several times on different occasions. Then you can state that: "in my letter to you dated x I responded to your false accusation that I had done y on z day." Don't be intimidated by the magnitude of the lies or the fact that several Managers are fully prepared to back up each others lies, the truth will be more inclined to prevail if you are open and direct in confronting all false allegations. They now have to keep all their lies straight and consistent with your documentation too. This is an impossible task for them and there will be multiple inconsistencies you can jump on in court. There are statutes of limitations to be considered and they are actively trying to outrun them while still managing to look legit. Use the pressure of your written demands to force the pace so that they are unable to stall for time to outdistance the truth.
In stark contrast I documented the entire sequence of events exactly as they happened to me in my case in meticulous detail. This written account has been reiterated many times in letters of appeal to various people, just as it is recounted here on the web. I don't have to do as my former OR Manager had to: go back over notes to remember which fabrication I used to describe what happened and worry about how someone might be able to refute what I have said! My truthful testimony is so indelibly reinforced in my mind now that with each recounting of the events there are no inconsistencies. If I discover that I have made a mistake in a conclusion that I made then I admit to it in writing as soon as I am aware of the error. At one point I thought I had been able to identify the patient who underwent a Liver Transplant while I endured my 12hour ordeal scrubbed continuously without a break. When I had presented it in my sworn statement to the Board of Nursing I had said "I believe that it was patient X history # yz." When I discovered that it probably was not that patient I sent a letter to say that my assumption had been mistaken. If you are ever in doubt about something you put in writing say so by writing "I believe" or "to the best of my knowledge."
My single biggest problem was that all the evidence I needed was kept under wraps by the Hospital where I had no access to it. That is what people who lie do, they deliberately suppress evidence for no legitimate reason. If my Hospital hadn't managed to trick me out of my day in court things would have been very different. The Hospital would have to had to hand over all of the suppressed evidence. I knew that once this was made available to me they would have got creamed in court, but there will probably never be a day in court now. Even with such limited access to my files, no accurate description of charges against me and no replies to my questions I had managed to document multiple inconsistencies in their account of why I was wrongfully terminated. I must rely on pressuring the Dean of the Hospital and another very influential Doctor that if they do not insist on a thorough investigation into my case and provide genuine transparence in their dealings with me then their public claims are just sheer hypocrisy. I will also be hoping that a few newspapers starts sniffing around to add to the pressure and incentive to come clean at last.
It is very distressing to me that it has come to this as I was such a staunch supporter of both of my former Hospital and the admirable efforts concerning patient safety pioneered by these Doctors. I truly hope that I will be able to turn things around and enlist their help in forging genuine changes that improve patient safety. These changes must finally address issues like deliberate unsafe understaffing, instituting very stringent control over the disciplinary process with genuine transparency provided by HR and the need to provide whistleblower protections through a fully accountable properly functioning Compliance Line. All the pain and heartache will be "worth it" if I can accomplish something tangible like this.
The exciting thing is that if these pragmatic and highly influential Doctors really can come to recognize the flaws demonstrated in their own policy and if they do not act defensively to protect the precious image of their Hospital they could do a lot of good. If they institute dramatic positive changes at their own Hospital, they will more than likely try to promote those same changes elsewhere and that will have strong, lasting positive ramifications for numerous Hospitals right across America. I have confidence in this and it makes my crusade doubly "worth it." In your efforts I might suggest looking to changes that go beyond the specific situation you encountered or targeting just your former Hospital. We cannot continue to fight these battles one at a time on an individual basis while patients remain in harms way. Broader changes are needed, some through the intervention of stronger more proactive Unions, some through accreditation agencies, advocacy groups or associations. It will take a stronger more unified approach and we must stand behind one another in the quest for safer care. Stick together and stay strong,
sorry folks i was posting a reply to an earlier part of the thread where tnnurse was talking about catching management out in a lie and it would come back to bit them in the bum. since that post there have been a lot about unions. the union that represented me sucked the big twinkie. they represented a lot of less skilled, lower paid staff and our professional issues like call pay got lost in the shuffle. they negotiated a better basic starting pay for the entry level staff, but just a minimal cost of living raise for or techs.
at the same union negotiation they agreed to reduce the hospital's final pay out of accrued vacation pay to 50%.this was a dangerous change because it not only benefited greedy management at the expense of staff, it actually provided a financial motivation to get rid of someone. it hit me hard at the worst possible time. after being forced to take two weeks off without pay as part of the retaliatory coercion to get me to leave i then loose $1200 in vacation pay i had already earned when they wrongfully terminated my employment. in england we have a name for this: we call it fraud. the necessity to remove me was not primarily financial, but that little bonus incentive made them fire me just three days before i was scheduled to leave for a christmas holiday with my family in the uk.
the unions need to think hard before they allow a new rule like that to be inserted into the union contract. in providing a financial incentive for wrongful termination they not only risk the security of our jobs they encourage the type of managerial fraud, retaliation and manipulation of the rules that we both experienced. it is hard enough with “at will” firing, no right to take breaks, mandatory overtime for critical workers like nurses and very limited whistleblower protections; we do not need incentives to fire people!
i was burned to a crisp by my union so it would be very hard to trust a union again after that. i guess the union is what you make it, but some are really useless. there does need to be more active involvement in the political agenda to push for better protections for all medical staff so that they can protect the best interests of patients. my suggestion of the day: contact senator paul sarbanes office as he was one of the senators responsible for the sarbanes/oxley legislation on whistleblower protections. “sox” as it is affectionately called targets fraud in banking, but is creeping into other areas now. we need to petition the good senator to get him to work on expanding this protection. it would be good for him to read the comments of nurses who have suffered retaliation as we have described here. he may be in a good position to take action if we can interest him in our cause. what do you all think?
I dont think it could hurt thats for sure....bc ...this is a broad problem.It isnt just nurses...but also physicians that are victioms too of sham peer reviews when they speak out on safety issues.
The Union that represented me sucked the big Twinkie. They represented a lot of less skilled, lower paid staff and our professional issues like call pay got lost in the shuffle. They negotiated a better basic starting pay for the entry level staff, but just a minimal cost of living raise for OR Techs.
Like I said ... there's good and bad unions. I also firmly believe that unions run by RN's best represent RN's. Unions that aren't run by RN's tend to be less effective, IMHO.
I was "laid off" my full time job with a home health hospice. I spoke with the Administrator and she was telling me about the financial difficulties the non-profit co. was having. Then she said to me "you are the highest paid LPN we have." I said "I hope so since the other 2 are both new grads and I have been a nurse for over 15 years!" But ya know guess who got laid off...me!! And I know for a FACT the other 2 LPN's working there had comitted several mistakes and I know one was MAJOR! But I the one with experience and no mistakes was the one they laid off! That was 2 years ago. I have been a nurse for a long time now...over 15 years and now I stay home with my little boys (happily I might add), and I have serious doubts about going back to the profession I love and the only one I have ever had or cared to have. I have had many bad experiences with management/admin. not wanting to see or hear anything that is a problem. I hope so much that this will change but I think as long as money is their bottom line and patient care is our bottom line these problems will continue.
Sheri257
3,905 Posts
I don't know for sure, but I've never heard of ANA or their affiliates doing any substantial legislative lobbying. If they have ... it hasn't been very successful. For example, all other attempts to pass ratio laws in other states have failed.
There's actually a war going on ... so to speak ... between the ANA and CNA. The California nurses union broke off from ANA years ago because they felt they weren't doing enough. Now CNA is trying to organize in other states. CNA recently won an election at an Illinois facility where the RN's decided to dump the ANA affiliate and go with CNA's organization there. Similar battles are happening in Hawaii and other states.
It's controversial, but some RN's are getting tired of the ANA and their affiliates maintaining the status quo.