What is it like? What do you do?

There really is no "typical day" for a nurse manager. I do a variety of things every day: helping with patient care, dealing with patient/family/doctor complaints, helping the director with whatever they delegate, PI data collection and analysis, writing reports about PI projects, writing performance reviews, giving performance reviews, assessing attendance problems and following up as needed, reviewing budget reports, calling staff to see if they will work/trade a day/pick up hours, interviewing and hiring, working on educational programs for staff, following up on incident reports, reviewing charts for a variety of reasons, cleaning up the unit, ensuring compliance with JCAHO regulations, checking for needed repairs and sending reqs for them and then following up to be sure the work is completed, ordering supplies, rounding on staff and patients to assess their satisfaction and/or concerns, working with other departments on various projects, attending planning meetings for various things, answering questions about policies, helping staff with FMLA paperwork....I could go on and on. What I do on any given day depends on whatever comes my way. A huge part of the job is communicating information up and down the ladder- truly a middle management function. While some may think that management doesn't do much, I can assure you that it is a demanding job with very diverse responsibilities. Sometimes it's thankless, such as when staff complains to upper management that the manager "doesn't help them enough"- they don't realize how much you have to do that may not take place at the bedside, but is "behind the scenes" stuff that facilitates their ability to do their job, and keeps the unit running more smoothly.

As far as budget, my director plans the annual budget, but I have to provide information such as what equipment may need to be purchased, what I think is appropriate staffing, etc. I also have to look at the bi-weekly reports and explain any variances from the budget, which may mean reviewing the previous 2 weeks staffing and census and trying to figure out why we may have been over or understaffed. So go for it, it's challenging and crazy, but also can be very rewarding. :)

nursemaa, thanks for your reply. It does seem like it would be an exciting change. I guess the years and years of hearing everyone complain about management has served to make me a bit gunshy, but no one can please all of the people all of the time - I have learned that lesson very well :)

i've gotten a pretty good idea of what nurse managers do. i'm working as a per-diem weekend supervisor. on the weekends, one person covers the house (97 beds). it's a lot of 'busy' work. it's a long term peds facility. i cover during the week occasionally, so then i get to see what the nurse managers do. the difference is, i'm not managing a specific unit, so when i'm covering during the week, any non-urgent issues are passed on to the nm when she returns.

recently there was an opening for a nm position. i've only been supervising for 6 months, so i wanted to get a better feel of the 'other side' before i applied for the position. turnover is so quick there (not a good sign), so there's always 'next time'. i also worked staff there before, so i had a good idea of what i was getting into. but it is so different on the other side- staffing is a b****, and consumes most of my shift. and being that i work on weekends, sick calls and cancellations on the w/e are out of control. that's the bulk of the work. patient/parent complaints and issues come in second.