Unhappy Nurse Manager

Published Feb 17, 2017

1 Post

I am a certified nurse-midwife who started my current job 1 year ago. For the first 6 months, the maternity nurse manager was my supervisor and approved my hours, but my affiliated OB/GYN group was in charge of my scheduling. They hired a new doctor (Dr. X) in September who is not fitting in and the nurses really don't like; at the same time, the OB/GYN group merged with the hospital so now the office manager is my supervisor and approves my hours and my schedule is still done with them, as are all provider schedules. I asked and was approved for Wednesday afternoons off, meaning that now I am only scheduled to work 45 hours/week instead of 50 (non-exempt salary and I stay late both forced or by choice 2-3x/week and was working up to 60 hours/week when I asked for this - I am trying harder on my own to set work/life boundaries now).

The doctors were very supportive of this adjusted schedule (I asked for every other and they gave me every week). However, ever since this happened, the nurse manager's attitude toward me has cooled considerably. She no longer talks directly to me and goes through the clinical nurse leader / daily charge nurse about policy changes. She has called the office manager to report PTO time that I did not take (was given off by docs) and reported it to HR when the office manager told her it was not her concern (HR concurred). Most recently, she has been blaming me for things Dr. X has done - for example, I asked him to round on postpartum patients one morning this week since I had multiple laboring patients and he had no patients that morning, and he didn't do it until late in the day - this got relayed to the department head that I "said I refused to see Dr. X's patients for him."

I feel as though I am getting "punished" for not being at the hospital all of the time, especially when Dr. X is on call. I know that most of the nurses are happier when I am on call vs. the doctors because I am always on site and so am accessible for questions as well as triaging patients so we can bill higher. I've been called in after hours for issues regarding Dr. X and happily come and fix them, and if a mom is pushing at shift change I rarely pawn her off on another provider. I am a team player and actually won a patient care award a few months ago, not even being at this hospital for a full year. And yet I can't seem to please this woman and it is starting to affect my job if she is reporting things that aren't true. I'm new to nursing and being in the "provider" role and I'm looking for advice as to how to break this tension. I obviously can't be at the hospital 24/7 and I have no control over Dr. X's behavior or job status and I'm just not sure how I can do anything "more" to make her happy.

TL;DR: Nurse manager has been unpleasant with me since office/hospital merge involving me working less and a doctor no one likes working more and I don't know how to make her happier.

Thanks in advance for any insights.