Stupid hospital/company tricks

Nurses General Nursing

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The stupid nurse trick thread and some of the abusive policies cited in the getting fired for being late/calling out thread have triggered me to start this thread. What ludicrous policies have been put in place where you work or have worked, what was the rationale for the policy, and what was the result?

My example:

One hospital I used to work for tried to force the nursing staff to bake cookies for the patients using what looked like a cross between an easy-bake oven and a toaster oven. Cookies were to be offered at....you've guessed it...7pm. Yes, right at change of shift. They also wanted us to DOCUMENT offering cookies. Predictably, this new mandate was met with howls of protest from nursing, which were entirely ignored.

The ovens went to each floor except ICU to "make the hospital feel welcoming and increase patient satisfaction." The already busy nurses often burned the cookies, or ate them during report, as they had not had time for a break all day. The majority of our cardiac patients were also diabetic. The floor smelled often of burnt cookies. The staff was resentful. A few months later, the cookie ovens disappeared, never to be mentioned again.

Specializes in ER, ICU, Education.
A minor one that died a quiet death:

Our hospital also had a contest on who can reduce their linen use the most, but offered no guidelines or even a foggy idea if we are wasting linen. As far as I could see, we were not being ballers and throwing linen on the floor like so many bottles of Cristal. My coworkers and I had fun coming up with tips though-

- Don't bathe your patient. Let them be au naturale.

- Use printer paper instead of washcloths.

- Have patients share blankets. Now they've made a new friend too.

What was the prize in the end? Yet another pizza party lol

Ahahaha! This reminds me of a video produced by ATI about bed baths that we were to show to our first semester nursing students. The patient is of normal weight and is bathed by a nurse who uses approximately 500 washcloths for the bath. Needless to say, so unrealistic, and I refused to show it without discussing reality (i.e., the patient will be at least twice your weight, immobile, and there are only two washcloths left on the cart and the CNA is too swamped to help).

Friend of mine works at a hospital that makes every nurse who cares for a patient sign a "thank you for allowing (me) to care for you" card, which is mailed to the patient's home after discharge. I imagine all of those patients throw out those cards as soon as they get them, too. No money for more nurses, but money for printing and mailing! All in the name of patient satisfaction scores!

This same hospital used to have rounding sheets, but now they are part of the EMR.

On night shift as the only nurse on the floor, electricity goes out to half the floor. No air mattresses, no IV pumps, no tube feeds, no vents/oxygen, etc, have to move every patient and cram them in other rooms with no space (fire hazard!) for the moment since I can't bag every patient and bolus every patient.

Call maintenance/management- their suggestion? "Go into the electrical room and flip some of the fuse switches or pull some of the plugs and see if you can get it to come back on." UM Heck no, I'll fry myself, burn down the building, and get in trouble because I obviously have no clue what I'm doing but you're too lazy to come fix the problem. Don't worry, if maintenance isn't here in 20 minutes I'll call the state and JCAHO myself...

Specializes in OB-Gyn/Primary Care/Ambulatory Leadership.
Knowing my coworkers and I, there would be attempts to make a MEGACOOKIE or cookies in... interesting... shapes.

I would just totally steal the frozen cookie balls. Cookie dough...much better than baked cookies. One of my husband's former employers had one of those cookie baking things (he is in hospice, though) - frozen cookie balls and a little oven thingie.

Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.

I can imagine the smell of baking cookies making one truly nauseated of they were at all inclined in that direction! What a dumb idea.

Specializes in allergy and asthma, urgent care.

I worked at a community health center that decided to run several emergency drills simultaneously. We had a man with chest pain, a Code Grey (patient threatening an employee), a supposed child abduction, and a pregnant employee with difficulty breathing. All of these were fake. So, we followed protocol and had police and EMS crawling all over the place. Trouble is, administration forgot to tell the city that these were drills. The center had to pay a hefty fine for tying up a good portion of the city's emergency response personnel. Staff were upset and we all ended up hours behind in seeing patients. The next day administration held a, you guessed it, pizza party to thank us for doing our part. Not one single employee attended.

Specializes in ER, ICU, Education.

I am also noticing a theme of weird rewards (lots of pizza parties). Our hospital once gave out those wooden/bamboo hand-shaped back scratchers with the facility name. We did get good use out of them, and menaced our coworkers with them for months. We would run one lightly over someone's hair, tap someone else's shoulder and hide, etc. We made great use out of this crappy gift. Hand shaped backscratchers were also placed inappropriately in the simulation lab. :whistling:

The hand-shaped scratchers were supposed to celebrate our success with the "offer a helping hand" campaign where we had to offer assistance to anyone within a given # of feet with a scripted response. We loved to use the script to annoy each other as well. ex-

"Jane! You seem frazzled and lost! Can I offer you some assistance? I have the time!"

​note: the above scripting is most effective when delivered to colleagues with a faux-lecherous leer.

Specializes in NICU.

We had pins we were supposed to wear promoting our facility. They ended up all stuck to the ceiling of our report room. You can still see the occasional one in the ceiling.

As I was leaving one hospital for another, they were implementing a system where the secretary would fill out on a log how long it took for call lights to get answered... REALLY!?

Specializes in Ambulatory Surgery, Ophthalmology, Tele.
Knowing my coworkers and I, there would be attempts to make a MEGACOOKIE or cookies in... interesting... shapes.

Oooooooh....Mega-cooooookieeeee. Mmmmmm, I think we would have to bring some vanilla ice cream and make an icecream sandwich with said cookies. Oh yeah! Don't tell ME nurses aren't 100% dedicated to completing a job well done. ;)

Specializes in LTC, Acute Care.

Oh, we have those too. They really want to make sure we are in those rooms.

We have both...

Specializes in Peds Homecare.

Thanks all for the laughs before bed! Baking cookies? I laughed out loud for real!:roflmao:

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