What to do?

[ubcnme]

OK, basically I'm looking for suggestions. I work for a public health dept current in immunizations but had worked in the STD clinic for the last 2 years, recently transferred to immunizations this past June. Our nursing supervisor retired in June and a nurse who had been hired for the STD clinic was allowed to have her position because of her administrative/mgmt background. Fine...but this nurse has no clinical skills whatsoever. She tries to keep a 'hands off' approach to anything in the clinic and to deal with only administrative issues. Our problem (staff) is that we know for a fact that she has breached major patient confidentiality which was even reported by the state health dept to our program supervisor and it was quietly swept under the rug. She constantly does things that affect every dept within CD without consulting any of us; we have all been employed here at least 2+ years. It's like she constantly makes a mess and then when we tell her why things aren't working...we get to clean it up. Now she is administering TB tests to employees and it came to my attention that she is not administering them properly and hasn't conducted any follow-thru to read them. I have offered my assistance over and over with anything that she isn't comfortable with while at the same time trying not to sound condescending and she will NOT ask questions of any of us...she does things and most of the time does them wrong! We are at our wits end and really have no idea how to proceed. We thought about making a list and taking it to our program mgr....but we have taken some complaints to her already and have been told to give our supervisor 'a break b/c she's learning'. I think she doesn't want to admit she made the wrong choice. Any suggestions from anyone?

[kaycee]

I guess keep documenting her mistakes and showing them to your supervisor no matter what she says. At least your letting them know when there is a problem. What they do with that information is up to them. Only document significant problems, you don't want to come across as a tattletale or a nit picker. I always find that people that consistantly make mistakes and never ask for help usually screw themselves eventually. You know the old saying "What goes around comes around".

Good luck.

[CATHYW]

I agree with Kaycee, but if you see her doing somehting obviously wrong that could be injurous to someone, that needs immedite attention. You didn't say how she did the TB (Mantoux?) tests wrong, but if she was not doing them intrathically, or was using the incorrect dose, etc., then that could be injurous. For example, hematomas, infection, localized rxn, etc. It also needs to be a group effort-not just one person documenting. However, you don't want to be considered a "herd or flock" trying to shut out the newcomer. If you are certain that she is not competent for the position, ask for a sit-down conversation witht the program manager, and several of you nurses, and make your concerns heard. Let us hear how it turns out...