I just started a hospitalist position in January, doing night cross-coverage. I am scheduled to come off orientation in a few weeks. On my way into work last week there was a conference call meeting and we were told that our position is being eliminated. This affects only 4 NPs in our group, and we are being offered a position 11am-11pm instead (two additional NPs already work 11-11). Instead of being a more autonomous position, the 11-11 position is basically being porificed out work by the MDs as they see fit.
After the meeting, one of the other NPs was working nights and heard from numerous staff members that this came about because one of the very vocal docs put forth that "as an acute care facility we should be staffed solely by MDs". So they're going to have 4 MDs instead of 4 NPs. The nurses on the floor are very upset because we are known as a group to be very responsive, coming to see patients quickly and responding to our texts in a timely manner. When someone calls out and cross coverage is done by the MDs, it's typically more difficult for the nurses to get timely responses.
Coming into a large teaching hospital I knew that the focus would be the medical staff and we're mainly support. But this is really disappointing because we had no input in this decision and it just emphasizes the "us vs them", instead of the organization supporting us NPs as professionals and encouraging the MDs to work with us, they just go with it.
Instead of starting my career, five months in I'll be looking for a new job again. I'm going to try to stay within the organization because the benefits are really exceptional. I'm hoping a different group may treat the NPs as professionals deserving of respect. We'll see what happens.
