VENTING

I have been a licensed nurse for a decade and have worked in about 5 LTC's and one LTAC. Of all the DONs I must say my current one is by far the laziest and most useless. She is never on the floor, never knows what's going on with any admission/patient. She comes in at exactly 9:00am and leaves at exactly 5:00pm, taking 2 hour lunches. She is Asian and ONLY hires Asian nurses, most of whom she has some kind of personal relationship with (family, friend, etc). most of our patients are Hispanic/Spanish speaking only and NONE of her new hires speak Spanish. Only about 1-2 nurses per shift speak Spanish fluently. Our ADON and our DSD are the exact same. They have no idea what is happening on the floor, never answer call lights. As a result all the CNA's are lazy, whine all the time, take breaks whenever they want to. The licensed nurses are either too busy to care or are too nice. I don't want to quit. I just want more structure. We have an awesome facility, that can be so much better, if we had supervisors that actually supervised, favored people less, we're consistent with management style.

Sheesh......generalize much?

I enjoy a good vent as much as anyone and will defend to the death a nurse's right to do so. But what I'm seeing here are a lot of "alls" and "nevers" and "nones", and even a hint of prejudice thrown in for good measure. What does the ethnicity of the DNS and the new hires have to do with anything? And why are you so concerned with what she and the social-services director are or are not doing---if things are as bad at your facility as all that, how is it that you have time to check up on them?

I don't mean to come across as harsh, and I know we say things on the Internet that we would never say at work. But I think you would do well to try seeing your managers and co-workers as individuals who all have hard jobs to do, and to realize that you don't really know what goes on behind the scenes. I've been a CNA, a floor nurse, an RCM, and a DNS---each one of those jobs is difficult and often thankless. So before you judge these folks, try working with them and be part of the solution to the facility's problems instead of letting them get in the way of your own work.

Just my $0.02 worth.