Tell me about your unit's general attitude & morale...

dudette10, MSN, RN · Oct 30, 2012

Morale sucks. New manager (new to management, too) who can't balance nursing needs/POV with the pressure she gets from her superiors and from ancillary departments. She's chosen to blame her nursing staff for everything.

monkeybug · Oct 30, 2012

In the dumps, horrible, awful, and sad. Labor and delivery. When I began working there years ago, it was very good. There was a genuine feeling of family. The nurse manager was firm but fair and handled things very professionally. Then, we got a new manager. She had less experience than the majority of the nurses on the unit and came from our rival hospital. She had been handpicked by our DON, they went to church together. She has NO people skills. After yelling at one of the nurses in the nurses station in front of a crowd of people, one of our wonderful retirees, J., who still works per diem said to her, "I want you to say one positive thing to us. Just one." Manager's response was, "Well, um, you help deliver babies?" That was the best she could do. She told people in public that "those old nurses are killing me." We went from one of the lowest turnover rates in the hospital to one of the highest. Just since January, 22 nurses and staff have resigned. I was one of them. When I turned in my request to drop down to per diem, she said, "Ok." No regret that I was leaving, no effort to get me to stay. 4 doctors sought me out and asked me what it would take to get me to stay, and told me how much they hated to see me go. When I turned in my notice giving up my per diem slot, I got no response whatsoever.

The doctors dislike her, the nurses are miserable. It's like pulling teeth to get anyone to work extra because everyone is so miserable. Nurses with 25+ years experience are leaving and transferring to other units because they are so unhappy with the general disprespect. She tells us all the time that she doesn't get time off, that management is 24/7, but then in the next breath she'll remind you not to call her during church (and whatever denomination she is, they have some dang marathon church services, because she's unreachable on Sundays from 7:00am-5:00pm) because that is "my time with Jesus." She has no regard for anyone's family life. When one of my coworker's mother was dying, she called that coworker the day that they made her mother a DNR and told her to come back to work that week or she would lose her day shift slot (coworker had used up all her FMLA with maternity leave, so while manager was technically within her rights, policy says it is her discretion, and her discretion, quite frankly, sucks). But, when manager's aunt's husband was in the hospital, manager was out for 17 days. Said hospital is an hour away, she really could have driven there to check on family, but no, it was all day every day for 17 straight days for soemone that had married into the family when manager was an adult.

When our last weather disaster occurred, she didn't show up. She didn't even call to check on anyone.

When we had a bad outcome (and bad outcomes in L&D are tragedies), she went to the nurse, one of our best and oldest, and berated her. Nurse had done everything by the book, but her performance was nitpicked. Nurse in question left manager's office in tears, saying she felt blamed for the bad outcome, even though the doctor assured her that there was NOTHING she could have, or should have, done differently.

No matter how ridiculous a family complaint, you will be called in her office and confronted about it. If the angry family or patient is the same race as the manager, and you are not of that race, you know that the recriminations will be twice as bad. They can claim you turned a rabid unicorn loose in the room and it gored someone, and she'll want to know why you let the unicorn go unvaccinated. She NEVER stands up for her nurses, ever.

We do employee surveys every year so that the hospital can measure morale. Hers have been consistently bad. So, we get to have meetings with the DON and the VP of nursing so that we can figure out how we, the nurses, can fix the unhappiness. I am finally on my way out the door, counting down the days until my notice is over and I'm free, but I cannot seem to let it go. I guess because, even though I have an amazing job at my new place of employment, I feel that I was forced out of doing something I love. I miss bedside nursing. I miss laboring patients. Heck, I miss IVs, placing internal monitors, and all the other clinical skills I practiced every day. But for her, I would still be there.

anotherone, BSN, RN · Oct 30, 2012

Pretty low morale. Med surg unit. Very high turnover. Almost all nurses on the unit or female. there are many male aides and 3 male nurses. The experience level is mostly low. Many less than 1 year. 2 years is a very experienced nurse on my floor. there are a few with 6 years, a couple with more than 15 (not all in med surg). I find little difference in those with 6 years vs those with 15 , honestly. Turnover is very high. Many new hires do not want to stay in med surg so they come in do their 6months to a year then head for the ICU,PACU, ER, LD etc. Never get any employees with experience , EVER. Occasional mandatory overtime although it is illegal, short staffing often enough, clueless manager.

turnforthenurse, MSN, NP · Nov 3, 2012

I think morale is better now with new management compared to how it was with our old manager/director. It's okay. Turnover has been high because a majority of our employees are military spouses so when there are orders to PCS, we move. I will say that I still work with a majority of the same nurses I worked with when I first started over a year ago. Most nurses on the unit are female. We have two male PCU RNs and we occasionally get male med-surg RN floats. I haven't seen any new grads on my floor when I first started...I think I was their last new grad that they hired. New grads start elsewhere in the hospital and seem to come to us later. All RNs have over a year of experience; some have prior years of experience as LPNs. We do have a few RNs with A LOT of experience, so it's mixed. No mandatory overtime, that's illegal. We are short-staffed but our management/supervisors are good with trying to keep the the ratios within an acceptable limit. We used to be 1:4 but now we are 1:5, which is really pushing it, but we are learning to deal with it. The hospital just doesn't have the money to hire staff to make it 1:4 again on my floor. Even the ICU nurses are finding themselves with 1:3 at times.

Aeterna, BSN, RN · Nov 19, 2012

Morale is incredibly low where I am now. It is frankly scary the amount of nurses who are leaving or are applying to other places. If I added up those two groups, I'd probably list about a third of the total RN staff. It's mostly because of our new manager, who fails to listen to our concerns about the unit. He doesn't understand the meaning of acuity and proper staffing, but he understands perfectly what our budget constraints are. I understand there needs to be a good balance, but when you are willing to sacrifice patient safety and nursing licences just to save money, then it's no good at all. It is especially frustrating because we have multiple management staff on our unit. If they eliminated just one of those roles, they'd cut our unit's deficit by over half.

allnurses Guide · Nov 19, 2012

ICU Stepdown and our moral is quite good. Work environment is family-like and we all take pride in our unit and its reputation with the doctors and patients. We expect a lot of one another but everyone gives a lot. Our unit manager is visible, personable, honest and values feedback. Our techs take pride in their jobs and work hard. Our new grads thrive from excellent mentoring. We have seasoned vets with up to 24 years of experience down to new nurses who just graduated in May. Turnover is very low and those who have left have gone back to school for NP. It isn't perfect by a long shot but I have been happy there.