What kind of little "Thanks" does your hospital give, or are they too cheap?

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My hospital turned from a non-profit to for-profit a couple of years ago. Since then it has been cost cut after cost cut. The latest thing to go was the 5 dollar Starbucks card that management would lay on someone after a great job or an especially hard day. Evidently administration considers a Starbucks card "reportable income." Now I've heard they're considering other options, like handing out page hilighters as a gesture of thanks. I already have about a million page highlighters.

So do you get any of the little things? Or are you just expected to work and go home?

Specializes in Certified Med/Surg tele, and other stuff.
For my birthday this year they sent me a card with a cafeteria gift card for $1.68. I bought a tasty soda, it was great lol

What? That is a really odd amount.

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Specializes in Oncology/Haemetology/HIV.
Trinkets and gift cards are a slippery slope, IMO, to trivializing performance. Do adult professionals in other fields expect gift cards for exceptional performance?

This!!!!!

My current employer pays me well, does not short staff, does not write one up over trivial stuff, does not stint on the OT pay, and if in an emergency, we have to stay on site, they offer extra pay, places to sleep, food vouchers, etc.

No little trinkets given out ....but I do not miss them.

Previous employers that gave out trinkets.....it never made up for bad staffing, picky writeups, arguing over clocking out so much as a minute after time, etc... that were part of their operation.

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Specializes in PDN; Burn; Phone triage.
Trinkets and gift cards are a slippery slope, IMO, to trivializing performance. Do adult professionals in other fields expect gift cards for exceptional performance?

Expect? Don't know. But my husband works as an avionics engineer for a large company and he gets trinkets and gift cards. My favorite time of year is when his company buys out the local amusement park for a day -- you only have to pay for food.

Have noticed that the frequency of small gifts is inversely proportional to his end-of-year bonus. His last bonus was all in company stock, actually.

/do you, like, not know anyone outside of the nursing profession or something?

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Specializes in Peds Medical Floor.

My brother works for a law firm and gets free tickets to things, gift certificates, etc. Actually they just paid for him to move to NYC. Paid for everything, moving van, moving men, food for the drive, gas, etc.

For Nurses Week I won a drawing....that turned out to be a tiny bag with the company logo splashe against it, and a tshirt from some golf tournament that gave money to the hospital. Basically I think they were cleaning out their junk and decided to give it as a prize.

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Specializes in Family Nurse Practitioner.

Budget cuts left our facility giving us nothing at all. In fact nurses week was called hospital week last year. The physicians were expected to be given potlucks by staff on each unit. Nurses not a darn thing:nono:

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Specializes in Emergency & Trauma/Adult ICU.
Expect? Don't know. But my husband works as an avionics engineer for a large company and he gets trinkets and gift cards. My favorite time of year is when his company buys out the local amusement park for a day -- you only have to pay for food.

Have noticed that the frequency of small gifts is inversely proportional to his end-of-year bonus. His last bonus was all in company stock, actually.

/do you, like, not know anyone outside of the nursing profession or something?

I, like, have been a professional in a field other than nursing, so my contacts outside of healthcare are many.

Maybe my point was better demonstrated in this post:

I switched jobs this year, and I have to admit, I find it a little frustrating that we are so conditioned to want and expect things like Starbucks cards. I did a few little random rewards for nurses showing appropriate hand washing. All of a sudden people were coming up to me, "Where is my magnet, I washed my hands? Where is my candy?" I'm thinking when did following policy need to be rewarded?

It is a job. You do work in exchange for money. All of those trinkets can be easily afforded on a nurses wage. Might be time to take a good look at what it is you really are looking for...my guess is that you are craving recognition. It is really time that Nurses start to VALUE themselves. If we need a trinket to reaffirm our worth...well It says a lot. You might not think its about worth or recognition...but really is it all about a Starbucks coffee that you can already afford?

Just picturing the scenario of a nurse seeking out a magnet or piece of candy in exchange for washing his/her hands makes me embarassed. It makes me think of the chore chart I had with stickers and candy for my kids -- when they were 3-5 years old.

Every employee in the hospital received 3% of their pay as a bonus for improved patient satisfaction scores.

This -- is an organization I'd like to work for. Learn the organization's goals ... align your performance with them ... and if the results are positive then you directly benefit as well.

But perhaps my point is also demonstrated by the part of your post which I have bolded. What do you think?

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Specializes in Hospital Education Coordinator.

I would rather have pay than trinkets. However, my facility has a big BBQ during nurses week along with other events. We get Walmart gift cards at Christmas and every quarter we have a drive in movie with rented screen out on a parking lot (good weather here year round). I like the movie the best. We bring lawn chairs and the hospital has door prizes, hot dogs and other junk food. To me the thank you comes from working in an environment where you feel appreciated.

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Specializes in ER, progressive care.

Oh and I forgot, last time I worked we had a free "build your own ice cream sundae" event. The reason was because our patient satisfaction has greatly increased and we had 100% compliance with initiating NHQMs on our patients. The ice cream, though, was the same ice cream that we offer to our patients...

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Oh and I forgot - on our birthday we get a card with a 9V battery in it. The battery has a note attached that says "Because we care about you and want you around for many more years, here is a new battery for your smoke detector. Happy Birthday!"

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Specializes in Pulmonary, Transplant, Travel RN.

I once worked for a hospital that was heavy into giving out the "gifts". Every month, the Director of Nursing had a dinner at a not very cheap place and everyone with at least one year of time with hospital was invited on the month of their birthday (nurse wise that is). Big bonuses for coming in on an off day: Free lunch day of, three days worth of lunch tickets if it was an off shift (weekend, night) and a cash bonus. Employee of the month got a special parking space in the parking lot, and even closer than that space was the employee of the year spot. Nurses week........forget about packing lunch cause you get it free, but it wasn't cafeteria food. Lunch/dinner was brought in from places that could handle large orders (pizza, oriental food, subs, huge salads).

Problem with that place was, they were making up for lost ground. They had to do all this because they were so inept at getting the things that really mattered in order. Staffing in departments such as radiology and resp. therapy was so bad, the nurses were constantly being put in a bad position (really, what do you do when a stat X-ray is ordered and the only X-ray tech working tells you they are going home before you'll even get the patient down there.........and no replacement is coming in util the next morning?). Nurses were frequently asked to pick up the slack for housekeeping and security (yes, we were told to help with making security rounds............AT NIGHT). Policies/procedures were so mixed and everchanging that the whole place turned into "the land of make it up as you go". Favoritism loomed over EVERY SINGLE unit in such a way that it was common knowledge.......if you don't know someone........don't apply there cause you'll never be considered anything but a worker bee. Unprofessional behavior was the norm with horizontal violence being accepted as "the way things go".

Sure, every place that gives a lot of "gifts" isn't like this, but I am confident in my suspicion that employers who are heavy with gifts are masking some other fault. I now work for a major city hospital that, while not being perfect, does not let things get out of control the way I described above. They are not at all into the "gifts". Heck, giving a highlighter pen would cost them tons......but I don't miss that stuff.

Someone once told me "Nursing sucks everywhere. There is no perfect place to work, you're going to have to put up with a certain amount of bull no matter how hard you search. Just find a place that has the things most important to you in place (parking, commute, staffing, schedule)." I agree with that and would insert: "Don't let them fool you into thinking the gifts matter."

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Specializes in ICU.

I don't need another keychain, change purse, cup or tumbler with the company logo on it. My hospital is extremely cheap about a lot of things, but when things get tough financially, they have the money to stay afloat. I worked for two different hospitals that went bankrupt, so as long as the one I am at currently stays afloat, I am happy. This isn't a rich hospital, but they save their money for when things get bad, and they have never had to "lay anyone off." It can be a crappy place to work, but they always come thru when you need time off, have a medical problem, etc. Those are the things that matter to me.

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Specializes in Pedi.
Oh and I forgot - on our birthday we get a card with a 9V battery in it. The battery has a note attached that says "Because we care about you and want you around for many more years, here is a new battery for your smoke detector. Happy Birthday!"

That is ridiculously awesome.

Speaking of awesome... I left my hospital job in April of this year. I had started there in September of 2007. Sometime around May or June, I got a package from the HR department that contained a clock (that was probably worth about $4.27) that said "congratulations on 5 years of service". And I thought... uh, 1. I don't work for you any more and 2. It wouldn't be 5 years now even if I WAS still working there.

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