Students (and others) using staff parking

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Specializes in Emergency, Telemetry, Transplant.

I don't want this to be viewed as sour grapes, and I don't want to be viewed as a nurse that doesn't like students; however, I have to get this off my chest...

My shift starts late morning. One day there was no parking in the staff lot, and I had to park in a visitor lot (and pay for that privilege). When I got in, I apologized to the secretary for being a few minutes late and mentioned my parking issues. She told me there were no spots today because there were "a ton" of students that were parked in the lot.

Again, I don't want to appear a whiner about this, but I pay a monthly rate to park in that lot. I've also seen drug reps, medical equipment vendors, etc. park in the staff lot. No idea if these individuals or the students pay to park there. When I was in school, one hospital where we did clinicals had ample free parking, so it was not an issue. Another did not. As students we could park on the *top* level of the visitor parking garage (and pay the daily fee for the lot...and get in trouble if we parked lower than the top level). Otherwise, you had to find parking on the street, pay the rate in the meter, and possibly have a fairly long walk to the hospital.

I like students, I like mentoring them, I want them to have a good experience in our hospital. I don't hold these views because I want students today to go through the struggles ;) I went through. However, I'm not too crazy about the students using staff parking.

Thoughts?

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Specializes in Critical Care; Cardiac; Professional Development.

Everywhere I did clinicals at assigned us to the furthest and least convenient parking lot and we knew simply because we were students that it would be par for the course. They are only there for a few weeks, after all, and should NOT be inconveniencing staff in any way. I find this ridiculous and suggest you complain to HR, the Education department or your manager.

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Specializes in Emergency, Telemetry, Transplant.
Everywhere I did clinicals at assigned us to the furthest and least convenient parking lot and we knew simply because we were students that it would be par for the course. They are only there for a few weeks, after all, and should NOT be inconveniencing staff in any way. I find this ridiculous and suggest you complain to HR, the Education department or your manager.

I have talked my manager about it, and he said "yeah, people have been complaining about it for years." I don't really pay that much for the lot, and don't feel like being in the middle of a big stink about it. But it is fun to come on here to complain about it. :cool:

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Specializes in Critical Care; Cardiac; Professional Development.

I raise my hand of protest in solidarity with you....

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I live on a narrow street with parking on one side that effectively reduces the street to one lane. We don't have garages or driveways. There is a nursing home one block up from the end of our tiny street and a small park directly at the end. There is enough parking for the residents most of the time but there was a college that used the nursing home for clinicals and it caused problems. They were supposed to park at the Catholic church 2 blocks away. But being that they were special they decided one day to park on our street and in the lot for the park resulting in those of us who live there (and paid taxes) to have to circle the block waiting for a spot to open not being sure what was going on. Sure enough at 1530 a whole slew of students came out and got in their cars and pulled out. Everyone let it slide that day but suddenly this was happening all of the time. One day I got so fed up I called the dean of students at the school. That's when we found out about the parking arrangement with the church. She said she would follow up (and she did) but it kept happening. So I called the ECF and asked to speak with the clinical instructor. When I got her on the phone and dropped the dean's name and told her that she knew what was happening we witnessed an amazing thing. All of a sudden all those students went running to their cars and moved them because, as it turns out the dean had threatened them with expulsion if they did it again. So, to make a long story short, I agree and I don't think it's sour grapes.

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Everywhere I did clinicals at assigned us to the furthest and least convenient parking lot and we knew simply because we were students that it would be par for the course. They are only there for a few weeks, after all, and should NOT be inconveniencing staff in any way. I find this ridiculous and suggest you complain to HR, the Education department or your manager.

Same here. No way were we to even think about parking anywhere close to where the employees parked. Seriously, I am surprised this isn't enforced as a lot of facilities have some pretty slim pickin's for parking. One clinical site we carpooled because we knew parking was an issue. As it was we parked in a garage waaay off campus and walked about 20 minutes. We'd have had our butts reamed if we'd have even breathed in the direction of employee parking ;)

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Specializes in Emergency, Telemetry, Transplant.
Sure enough at 1530 a whole slew of students came out and got in their cars and pulled out.

I find my situation more annoying than anything, and I will never take it beyond and idle complaint to my boss about it. The situation you describe would make my blood boil. :madface: I'm glad the school did something in your case...if they didn't my next call would be to the city (borough, township, etc.), and the school and facility would be informed that I was making that call.

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I find my situation more annoying than anything, and I will never take it beyond and idle complaint to my boss about it. The situation you describe would make my blood boil. :madface: I'm glad the school did something in your case...if they didn't my next call would be to the city (borough, township, etc.), and the school and facility would be informed that I was making that call.

What put me over the edge was my elderly parents had driven down for a visit and had to park 6 blocks away which I didn't know until they were knocking on my door.

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I live on a narrow street with parking on one side that effectively reduces the street to one lane. We don't have garages or driveways. There is a nursing home one block up from the end of our tiny street and a small park directly at the end. There is enough parking for the residents most of the time but there was a college that used the nursing home for clinicals and it caused problems. They were supposed to park at the Catholic church 2 blocks away. But being that they were special they decided one day to park on our street and in the lot for the park resulting in those of us who live there (and paid taxes) to have to circle the block waiting for a spot to open not being sure what was going on. Sure enough at 1530 a whole slew of students came out and got in their cars and pulled out. Everyone let it slide that day but suddenly this was happening all of the time. One day I got so fed up I called the dean of students at the school. That's when we found out about the parking arrangement with the church. She said she would follow up (and she did) but it kept happening. So I called the ECF and asked to speak with the clinical instructor. When I got her on the phone and dropped the dean's name and told her that she knew what was happening we witnessed an amazing thing. All of a sudden all those students went running to their cars and moved them because, as it turns out the dean had threatened them with expulsion if they did it again. So, to make a long story short, I agree and I don't think it's sour grapes.

We used to own a home near a huge college campus. On game days, people would park on our street, sometimes even blocking driveways. The neighborhood got fed up, got unified, and used the system to establish regulations for our street. You have to have a resident parking sticker-we paid the city for these, with no complaints (or a guest tag given by the resident)- to park on our side of the street. Anyone without the sticker or tag gets towed. Amazing how compliant people get when they know the city or residents mean business.

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Specializes in Psychiatry, Community, Nurse Manager, hospice.

When I was a student in the olden days of 2016, we were told where we could park for each clinical site and we parked where we were told... or else. Not cool for students to be in the staff lot if there isn't a ton of space.

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One hospital I worked at was across a busy 4 lane street from a church. Arrangements were made for (I guess anybody?) staff, visitors, etc., to park there, I never had to use it through pure luck I guess.

Another hospital made arrangements with a drive in movie theater about 6 miles from the hospital. Staff could park there and shuttles ran frequently between the lot and the hospital. I think they even kept security guards on the parking lot site. I used that, it worked out fine.

Both have since built large parking structures.

This was when I worked days. I don't know how nurse felt who got off work at 11:00 pm to be parked so far away? I'm not ignoring night shift workers. The benefit of working night shift, parking was never an issue.

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Specializes in Psych ICU, addictions.
When I was a student in the olden days of 2016, we were told where we could park for each clinical site and we parked where we were told... or else. Not cool for students to be in the staff lot if there isn't a ton of space.

Heck, our clinical instructors told us that if we parked in any staff parking, it would be an automatic fail for clinical. I'm not sure how enforceable that would have been, but none of us were willing to take THAT chance!

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