I work straight midnights on a medical floor. I took a vacation day Sunday night (that's not really important but I felt like mentioning it). On Monday and Tuesday nights, I had an okay assignment. Not too busy, no complete cares, nice people. Monday was rather hectic, though, because I was hanging blood and stuff but Tuesday was just fine. I knew Wednesday would be kind of busy, because one patient would be doing a bowel prep and another would be going for angiography in the morning, plus two patients would be discharged and who knew what kind of patients I would get.
Anyway, I had all this in mind as I walked onto my floor Wednesday night. I greeted one of the evening shift nurses, who says to me that she's sorry I'm following her. I laughed and said I shouldn't be following her because I've had this other assignment for two nights and I knew there were eight hour people in it so I shouldn't be bumped. She said she hoped she was wrong because it was a terrible assignment. Gosh, I hoped she was wrong also!
I looked at the assignment sheet, and guess what...my friend was correct. The charge nurse was already on her way over to me because she knew I'd have a bit of a problem. She said, "look, you don't really want to know why I put you there, and if you were charge you would have done the same thing." (Let me add that I LOVE this charge nurse. She is a wonderful person, very helpful and thoughtful. One other time I grumbled about my assignment and she changed it for me so I could retain some of the same patients. So she's understanding and believes in continuity of care.)
I told her that I wanted to know the reason, and she explained that we had a pulled nurse from another floor, and she couldn't put her in the awful assignment because that district only has one nurse, unlike the other districts that have two. Okay, that made sense and was thoughtful but didn't explain why I had to be moved. There was another assignment available for that nurse. My charge nurse hesitated and then told me that the only other choice was to have "Reesa" in that assignment, and "we can't do that because she can't handle it. You can. I'm sorry." I couldn't help it, I started to cry out of frustration. I wasn't sobbing or anything, but tears were running down my face. I collected myself and took report.
The night wasn't so bad, and I felt that Reesa could have handled it. At least she should be able to...I'm not paid any more for having a harder assignment. The next night, I talked to the charge nurse again and explained that I felt I was being punished for being a stronger nurse and that's why I had been upset. She said to me, "so are you going to start slacking off? No, you know you're not." And she's right. I'm not going to start slacking off, but I am not encouraged to work hard if this is the recognition I get! I understand that a difficult assignment requires a stronger nurse but I think we all have to pull our own weight as well.
