What would you do?

It would be irresponsible to go to work and risk passing on an infection to your patients. Whether the agency was irritated or not, you did the right thing.

only time will tell that you are not that kind of 'people'.

and like orca said, you did the right thing!

hope you feel better and get over what ever you might have soon.

people get sick new job or not and now days with the H1N1 going around stay at home don't give it another thought. If that don't work and you still feel bad go to work and cough on all of the phones , keyboards ,break rooms and get real close to your coworkers when you talk to them

You just had the round of bad luck this being your second week. You did the right thing. Maybe best thing go to the doctor and get an excuse that you were sick, even if you don't think you are sick enough. It covers your behind. I would think with this swine flu going around they really would not want you there with kids but right now they might think you just are irresponsible for leaving them in a bind.

Hey don't listen to scootertrash nurse. I think you did the right thing. You wouldn't want little kids getting sick b/c of you.

well I don't have the flu..thank god! I have bronchitis. I am still hoping I have not ruined my reputation at work though. Thanks for your input!

I just started a job at a Pediatric Clinic through and agency and everything has been wonderful. I love this job and the people who work there. Yesterday around 4 or 5 I started feeling awful..chest congestion...never ending cough...high fever. I finished work and went home to sleep it off. I woke up this morning and felt a little better but still had a fever. I called my agency and explained the situation and said I felt I shouldn't be working around kids and babies with a fever and with how I felt. Well an hour later my agency lady calls and sounds very irritated and says well I called the clinic and the nurses are going to have to work together to take care of your doctors appointments that day. She also wanted to know if I was feeling better and if there was a chance I could go in. She was not very happy with me I could tell...Anyways I never get sick..I never call in sick. I just happened to get sick the second week into my new job!! How would you guys handled the situation? Would you have went in? I know it looks bad now to everyone and the doctor I work with that I called in sick 2 weeks in..I don't want them to think I am unreliable.

You work in a pediatric clinic, came down with symptoms that MIGHT be indicative of H1N1---and the staffing person at the agency gave you a hard time for calling in sick??? Good grief, children and adolescents are the most susceptible to H1N1 and otherwise healthy kids are DYING from this flu. You're symptomatic and, in spite of careful infection control procedures, you could expose your young patients to H1N1 or whatever other respiratory crud you have.

Does the agency staffing person who gave you a hard time have any common sense whatsoever? I can just see this sort of nonsense happening again and again when things really get bad with H1N1. "What do you mean, you're sick? Come to work anyway because we're short-staffed. Wash your hands. Use a mask." Yeah, right. :angryfire

No, you are not unreliable. You are wise to take care of yourself, to stay home when you're sick and to not expose your patients and co-workers. Your agency is being unreasonable. You may wish to bring this matter to the attention of the supervisor of the person who hassled you about calling in sick so that this doesn't happen to anyone else. Please take care of yourself, get some rest, see a primary care provider to determine if this is H1N1 or something else. Get well soon, k?

You can't please everyone. If you call in, you tick off people, but that is the right thing. If you go to work, and have a cough, or other symptoms in front of the parents who are bringing their kids in, what will they think of the clinic and the Dr in general? What advice would you be giving the parents of a child that had your symptoms? Stay home.

and can you be at your top performance when you are that sick? or should you be working all doped up on cold meds with no sleep? what if you make an error at work and put people at risk?

you did the right thing

I find it ironic that hospitals are posting signs in hallways and elevators telling people to STAY AWAY if they have the signs and symptoms you mentioned, yet some people are willing to make exceptions for health care workers.

Of course, you did the right thing. You are new to this agency, so their staffing folks might be sizing you up to see if you will cave under pressure. That makes their job easier in the short run, but harder when the sick person has dragged herself to work at their behest . . . and infected many others.

Stick to your guns on this one. And, please, don't fall on your sword and act all apologetic. That is sure to be exploited. Present a strong and confident attitude, stressing that you made the only responsible choice and that you are a little surprised they would encourage you to do something so potentially harmful to patients and other staff members.

Stick to your guns on this one. And, please, don't fall on your sword and act all apologetic. That is sure to be exploited. Present a strong and confident attitude, stressing that you made the only responsible choice and that you are a little surprised they would encourage you to do something so potentially harmful to patients and other staff members.

oh my gosh, yes to the above.

while acting "strong and confident" is the mature way to handle this, i'd go a step further by even acting a tad irritated, and then expressing your dismay/surprise re her expections of you.

i despise guilt trips.

it's about darned time that when we nurses say no, we stand by it and refuse to feel guilty about it.

doesn't matter what we say no to.

for various and unwarranted reasons, the public et al have a misleading view that nurses are angelic, sweet, little good-deed doers.

subsequently, we are simultaneously perceived as kind, caring, sweet, gently patting our pt's brow with a dampened, bright white washcloth....stepford style, like this girl nurse here. (

this smiley nurse, is our image in a nutshell.:nurse: (

bottom line, it's about darned time we reclaim our status as it should be:

as a competent, intelligent, and assertive professional, that refuses to yield to the guilt-induced head games that so many challenge us with.

we need to learn to say "no" and "no more".

and mean it.

that's what i would do (in response to your question).:)

leslie

i despise guilt trips.

it's about darned time that when we nurses say no, we stand by it and refuse to feel guilty about it.

doesn't matter what we say no to.

for various and unwarranted reasons, the public et al have a misleading view that nurses are angelic, sweet, little good-deed doers.

subsequently, we are simultaneously perceived as kind, caring, sweet, gently patting our pt's brow with a dampened, bright white washcloth....stepford style, like this girl nurse here. (

this smiley nurse, is our image in a nutshell.:nurse: (

bottom line, it's about darned time we reclaim our status as it should be:

as a competent, intelligent, and assertive professional, that refuses to yield to the guilt-induced head games that so many challenge us with.

we need to learn to say "no" and "no more".

and mean it.

Leslie,

:tku:

If I could give a thousand kudos to you for this statement, I would.

I, too, am sick of being a Stepford Nurse.

We all need to stick up for ourselves and each other.

Dear God, yes, we do need to stand up for one another. Sometimes the expectations that people have of nurses are insane, and that is a form of emotional violence that should no longer be permitted.

I recently had an incident happen to me where that kind of guilt trip was dumped on me by a co-worker. I am 56 years old and have been an RN for 35 years. I went home that night in tears and spent an hour talking to the nursing supervisor and to my manager, and nearly resigned. The issue was about my "not spending enough time" with some patient who wanted to argue about her pain medication when I had another patient next door who was about to become unconscious due to a low blood sugar. Unfortunately for me, the patient wanting pain medication (which I'd rushed to bring) was related to the unit secretary and this made one of my nurse co-workers very mad, so she decided to rip me to pieces when I complained that the patient scratched me until I had welts on my hand and arm when I tried to take the narcotics back to the med cart because it is illegal to leave them at the bedside if someone won't take them.

I am sick to death of things like this. It was my first day on our new computer system that had just recently gone live and I was overwhelmed by my assignment and by all that was happening. Luckily my charge nurse helped me out with my assignment or I never would have seen my other patients for about the first three hours of the busy afternoon shift.

People may expect us to be Godlike and flawless and think that we can be in five places at once, but the reality is that we cannot. And if people cannot accept that reality, then that is THEIR problem, not ours. I am still hurt and angry about the incident and I am fearful every time I must return to work. I pray and meditate every day to try and deal with this nonsense. But when I spoke with my manager, I made it clear that I was not about to take the brunt for the feelings of whoever thinks they were so badly hurt in the situation I had to deal with BECAUSE I DID THE BEST I COULD AND WENT OUT OF MY WAY to be helpful. I could have just let that patient wait for her pain meds. But I tried to be there.

We work in hostile and paranoid environments where family members and visitors who are uneducated and demanding are often present, holding their guns to our heads. We need to stand tall and walk tall because we are the licenscees who must determine what our priorities are, and no one else has that right, even though corporate medicine has tried to take it away from us by having unrestricted visiting hours etc...so that they can be more "competitive".

But the art and science of nursing and medicine and the realities that go along with it are still alive, whether they like it or not.

Thank you, my friend, for saying what needed to be said.