Sleeping aides at work

ladytraviler · Nov 29, 2009

I have had this happen. I woke the cna up and told her to go home as she could not do her job while asleep. I told her she needed to speak with the DON before coming back to work. She came back after a two week suspension and never said a word to me. If I can't sleep at work, by george, no one else will either.

SpaceCoastRN · Nov 29, 2009

My wife is an RN on a Neuro PCU floor, she has this one beat, she has a fellow (sister I guess actually) RN that every night is sleeping at one of the nurses stations. All of the other RN's are busting their butts the entire shift yet this one somehow finds the ability to sleep every night. Not sure exactly how that happens.

Nascar nurse, ASN, RN · Nov 29, 2009

if I can't sleep at work, by george, no one else will either.

I would have woke her up and told her this... no slamming doors for me. I would want her to know she was caught Depending on the situation and any explanation from her I may have even agreed to let this go "this time", but with a promise that this would be the only time. (Maybe she wasn't feeling good, had a kid that kept her up the day before, etc)

nurseiam08 · Nov 29, 2009

Before I became an RN, I worked as a CNA on an acute floor of a rehab hospital. There was another CNA there who constantly wrapped herself up in heated blankets and fell asleep in an alcove, out of sight of the nurses. This was on neuro floor, where many pts are on 15 min checks, bed alarms, high fall risk. I hated working with this lady, because it meant that often I had to do double the work. I got tired of constantly going to wake her up. I was new, so I didn't wan't to make a big deal out of it. Luckily one night the nsg supervisor found her asleep, told her to get her purse and jacket and go home. She did come back a week later, but she stopped sleeping at work. I was glad she was given a chance to keep her job, she was a nice person, just working night shift wasn't agreeing well with her body.

sasha2lady · Nov 29, 2009

This aide is mid aged single no kids chronic complainer hides in rooms to avoid call lights and alarms. She's been wrote up on my shift over 4 times for things ranging from arguing and being hateful to residents and coworkers not to mention many families complaints about her she doesn't participate on any teamwork at all frequent call INS she has lied many times and claimed that mgmt has given her permission to do things that were never approved. According to another nurse she has done this before, her luck just happened to run out last night when I caught her. I'll see what happens today.

Crux1024 · Nov 29, 2009

Sleeping on the job is automatic firing at the hospital I work for.

I also work 3rd shift and when i feel the sandman creeping up on me, i start to move.

BigBub1000 · Nov 29, 2009

before i became an rn, i worked as a cna on an acute floor of a rehab hospital. there was another cna there who constantly wrapped herself up in heated blankets and fell asleep in an alcove, out of sight of the nurses. this was on neuro floor, where many pts are on 15 min checks, bed alarms, high fall risk. i hated working with this lady, because it meant that often i had to do double the work. i got tired of constantly going to wake her up. i was new, so i didn't wan't to make a big deal out of it. luckily one night the nsg supervisor found her asleep, told her to get her purse and jacket and go home. she did come back a week later, but she stopped sleeping at work. i was glad she was given a chance to keep her job, she was a nice person, just working night shift wasn't agreeing well with her body.

if you were doing her work, you were complicit. i do understand you got tired of waking her up, but being an enabler was not the solution. was she suspended for a week or what? at least she stopped sleeping otj.

for everyone else and for op: do you see what shape our profession is in? someone who is sleeping through q 15 minute neuro checks is allowed to keep doing it? by the don, no less!

op, you did a good thing by going to the adon if you already know that your don is so "accommodating". we shall see the outcome. if you get no satisfaction, you have a tough (but simple, not easy but simple) choice to make. that would be to complain about her to higher-up's, to cms, to jcaho, to the owner of the facility if it's a nursing home or long-term facility.

remember this: your license is on the line if her sleeping causes serious problem(s). that is, if a patient suffers harm as a result of her being "missing in action", and if it becomes known that you knew she was sleeping but did nothing about it, you could suffer repercussions for "ineffective supervision". i'm not a lawyer, but that's my view. picture yourself at a deposition, facing the lawyer of an injured patient. let's say the patient fell trying to get to the toilet because no aide came to help her within 30 minutes and she just couldn't hold it any more. she broke her hip and banged up her hands, knees, other bony parts, and face. the picture someone took on their cell phone or videocamera shows her looking horribly bruised.

you, as the supervisor, must explain that you saw aide smith asleep but you did not wake her, since she does this every night. you were afraid to go to management, since they knew she routinely did this but repeatedly took no action against her, despite multiple complaints about this sleeping beauty. :yawn: there might be some mercy for you because of the hx of management's improper behavior, but you could conceivably find yourself being adjudged co-complicit in causing the patient's injuries. you could truthfully say that you were busy with your own work and it is not your job to police your aides, if you have to follow them around, how can you do your own work, they are supposed to come to work to care for patients, not snooze at unauthorized times, and the like. but you might find it difficult or impossible to get yourself totally absolved of all responsibility.

something you might want to do is hold a meeting, having people sign in and keeping a copy of the minutes and sign-in sheet for your personal file as well as giving a copy to the don, adon, and hr or whoever. at the meeting, discuss this issue and read the policy on it into the minutes, and state that you are unable to do anything other than wake a sleeper and report that person, as well as send the person home for a 2nd offense. be totally up front, totally honest. cite your own liability for doing anything less. have everyone sign for a copy of the relevant policies that you hand them. this is business, not personal. holding such a meeting should help protect you in case of any trouble. hold it at certain intervals, maybe q 3 months. or make new staff sign for a copy of the policies about sleeping, dress code, tardiness, breaks, whatever other issues you want to include. it should only take a few minutes. i know it's hard. we are not policemen, we are nurses. our hearts are not in law enforcement but in ethical treatment of hurting humanity. and some of us have a hard time seeing how a little snooze could be so dangerous or how anyone could sleep, knowing that patients are needing care but are being ignored. but that's the reality. don't take my word, talk to some malpractice attorneys or view malpractive insurance websites. there are stories like this by the gross.

let's compare it to the situation of the white house party crashers. you know the guard who let them in is history. but what about those who were supposed to teach him his job and supervise him? do you think they might also be shown the door? believe me, someone is going to go over his hr file and whaterver other files are kept with a fine tooth comb. was he oriented to all procedures? did he get all required inservices? any hx of screw-ups like this? was corrective action or discipline taken? and so forth. his immediate supervisor and maybe someone even higher up could well be fired along with him over this extremely serious and embarrassing mess. thank goodness the first family was not harmed. imagine if they had been. the whole blasted ss would be fired! as it is, they created a serious embarrassment and a serious breach of security. the rest of the world is laughing and tongue-wagging, i'd imagine. just like when people have broken in to buckingham palace or something like that. horrendous security lapses. you know someone had to have been fired.

while not in quite the same league, nurses are held responsible to effectively supervise our subordinates. and no matter how much we hear about teamwork, a good lawyer will likely point out that the licensed charge nurse or team leader nurse was ultimately responsible for the functioning of her team members. just my thoughts, i could be totally off base. maybe nothing would fall on you, as "stuff" does roll downhill, so they say.

but you did right to report this to management and to wake up the aide. next time, wake her directly and send her home, i think. have your boss there as a witness. or maybe you should inform your direct report supervisor of the situation and that you want to send her home. get your boss to put in writing anything to the contrary, anything that is a lesser stance or that allows or condones this serious misbehavior.

for those who feel empathy for her, as she might have terrible sleep-preventing personal situations - do not think me heartless. but, as much as you might empathize and sympathize and understand, are you still willing to go out on a limb for her? do you think the licensing rn board is going to applaud you for being kind instead of getting this dangerous worker out of the reach of harming helpless patients? :down:

we hold lives in our hands, even if indirectly. we must be only about their safety. forget empathy for workers, forget being afraid to correct and discipline. go over the heads of whoever is standing in your way, whoever is a threat to your livelihood and ethical integrity. you might find yourself as the don, whether you want it or not! :eek:

pca_85 · Nov 29, 2009

This aide is mid aged single no kids chronic complainer hides in rooms to avoid call lights and alarms. She's been wrote up on my shift over 4 times for things ranging from arguing and being hateful to residents and coworkers not to mention many families complaints about her she doesn't participate on any teamwork at all frequent call INS she has lied many times and claimed that mgmt has given her permission to do things that were never approved. According to another nurse she has done this before, her luck just happened to run out last night when I caught her. I'll see what happens today.

She is in the wrong line of work or needs to work a different shift, they invented coffee for a reason, ya know.......

caliotter3 · Nov 29, 2009

I worked at a facility where the CNA staff were, supposedly, allowed to sleep on night shift and they were quite vocal about it. According to everyone, the DON said that CNAs could sleep on night shift because the majority held two jobs. The majority of them used this excuse to camp out in the hallways in geri chairs covered with sheets and with pillows and blankets. Then the DON had the audacity to criticize licensed nurses because the residents were in beds soaked with urine from one end of the shift until the other. You can't have it both ways.

fuzzywuzzy, CNA · Nov 29, 2009

We have someone like that. She is slow to begin with and totally useless after lunch. She'll just sit there at our desk nodding off every 2 seconds pretending to do "paperwork." IF she does get up off her butt to answer a light she'll hide in that room forever.

She's my partner tomorrow. :icon_roll

nursejoy1, ASN, RN · Nov 30, 2009

At my facility- we have had 2 RN SUPERVISORS caught sleeping on the job!!!! They were of course fired. The supervisors were certainly setting a good example- don't ya think? One lay doen on a sofa and the other pulled a chair up in front of her chair, got a blanket and propped her feet up and slept a couple of hours IN FRONT OF THE CAMERA!!!! Both of them were in the day areas in plain site of all staff!