Safe Staffing Saves Lives - ANA has started a campaign for us

forrester · Jul 21, 2009

Administration, government and unions all have their own interests at heart. Pretty simple concept. I don't think I can explain it any better.
If you feel that you are doing something by paying union dues. I suggest that you actually consider that you, as an individual, have options.
I strongly encourage all nurses to act and take responsibility for themselves.
You have the power! Don't pay someone to do it for you!

I do act and take responsibility for myself, but as I have aged, I've come to recognize that we have a responsibility for each other as well, particularly our patients. I cannot help but feel for all the nurses who go into work each day and get beat up by systems which do not understand or value nursing.

So go ahead, look out only for yourself. I'll stay on my path.

For anyone who agrees that we have an obligation to each other, I still recommend the anonymous membership in the CNA/NNOC for the reasons I stated before- They are the ONLY nursing group growing in numbers, they have a track record of success, and they are committed to improving nursing.

Woodenpug, BSN · Jul 22, 2009

Nice that we can disagree, without falling into the usual allnurses.com sophism.

But I'd like to say, that realizing one's own power does not mean not looking out for each other.

nursemike, ASN, RN · Jul 22, 2009

I just joined this site and I am about to end that membership. I am really shocked. First, the grammar and spelling here is amazing. Are you SURE you graduated from that 'tough program and passed that exam"? Second, unsafe care is unsafe care. YOU deliver that care. YOU make it safe or unsafe. When I started nursing in 1986, I had 6 patients and was in charge of a heavy neuromedical floor at a top 10 hospital in the midwest. I had NO CNA or 'tech' to do my work. I had to do it all. I was never late getting out and I gave wonderful care to my patients. I left my rooms clean and my patients too! It was the expectation. Period. The real issue here is work ethic and what is considered 'work'. I work now with a large percentage of lazy, spoiled nurses and I think 98% of them replied to this thread.
If this is what nursing is for you...I am glad to say I am gone from here )

I became a nurse way back in 2005. I work on the unit where I worked in an unlicensed position. When I started nursing school, there were nurses on my unit I wouldn't let babysit my cats. By the time I graduated, there wasn't one I couldn't learn from. The staff hadn't changed, but I had a much clearer view of what they were doing and why. That isn't to say that every nurse on the floor was a role model, but several I'd once thought were not so good were (and are) role models, at least to some extent.

These days, I also work with several nurses less experienced than I am. A few--very few--have been great nurses right out of the gate. Fewer still have been whiney crybabies who were never going to be good nurses. Most have been like our current newbies--eager to do well, but badly in need of direction. They remind me a lot of someone I used to be (and sometimes still am).

I'm replying to this old post because I believe it illustrates one of the major problems in our profession (and many others). If most, or many, or "a large percentage," of your staff won't do their jobs correctly, there are two possibilities. One is that you've hired a bunch of inferior employees. In nursing, it often appears that that's management's automatic assumption. They (we) aren't as well trained as those who came before, or we're lazy and have a poor work ethic, or we believed all the teaching that nursing is a "learned profession," and would be done mostly at a desk, with our brains, rather than at the bedside, with our backs. New nurses, and even somewhat experienced ones, struggle because they just aren't up to par. Older, more experienced nurses sometimes struggle because they're older--physically less agile, emotionally burned out, and intellectually out-of-date, unable to adapt to the new demands of our evolving field.

I'm not a kid. I'm still a new-ish nurse, but I've been in healthcare for a bit, and in life a bit longer. Physically, nursing is the easiest job I've ever had. I'm tired and achy after an average 12 hr shift. When I was a younger, stronger carpenter, I'd have been nearly dead after 12 hours. (Actually, I typically "worked" 8 hours, then spent a few more picking up my tools and going on sales calls, or buying materials for the next day, or whatever, so 12s and even 14s weren't unknown, but I usually only did 8 or so "paid" hours--I was self-employed, so my boss was free to abuse me without repercussions from the labor board. I suppose I could have reported myself, but I doubt it would have done much good.)

My experience in life has been that when large numbers of people aren't doing what they should, it's more typically because they can't. I can think of a nurse or two, maybe even three, on my unit who at least don't appear to care much about doing their jobs. The vast majority want to do a good job, and even excel. They, like me, are not discouraged when they work hard to give their patients the care they need. It's what they expected when they decided to be nurses. But the best, most experienced nurses I've known do get discouraged when they have to work as hard as they can to provide the minimum care necessary to keep patients safe and find precious little left to keep them comfortable, much less to educate them or address their spiritual and emotional needs. And then document everything under the sun.

I've had a tough couple of weeks, recently. Last weekend, particularly, was even tougher, in part due to personal issues I can't blame anyone for. My patient load has not been entirely realistic for the past several shifts--even the night I had only two in stepdown, they were really busy patients, although I think I did about as well with them as necessary, and only had to stay over a few minutes to chart. And, again, the last few nights were more discouraging than they might have been for reasons other than the work itself.

I'm not discouraged, overall. Some shifts are better than others, and this is not my first run of tough assignments. Had I been making the assignments, I probably wouldn't have changed them. I was more experienced than my peers, those nights, and my major problems were in areas that are among my strengths. So, I'm whining, and yes, one less patient would surely have helped. But I never had more than six (our max) and that's usually manageable. I did manage, except that I had to work over to chart, and my charting was still probably substandard. But if another nurse, or my management, wants to question my work ethic, or my time management, or even my skills, I'm really not interested in hearing about it. I guess I'm getting old and grumpy, but my attitude is, if you can do better, knock yourself out.

So, I'm one nurse, and I'm surely not the best nurse around. If they need to replace me, they can. But if they need to replace half my unit, they're SOL, and maybe need to look at their expectations. It's a big world, and out of all the hospital units, there may well be some in which a large percentage of nurses are slackers and only one or a few are really good. But by far the more usual condition is where one or a few recognize their own hard work but fail to appreciate the hard work of others. And I have to say, my experience has been that those most critical of others are somewhat inclined to over-estimate themselves. I'm not saying that's always the case, but it happens quite a lot, and that's a big part of what's wrong with nursing.