Just curious to see what cockamamie things the rest of y'all have to put up with. I used to work in a locked psych facility, and there was a rule in place that stated the number of call ins you could have in a certain time period. After a certain number was reached, you had to be warned verbally.
Well, I was PRN, usually worked full time hours, and was often called in to replace the people who had called in for whatever reason. I began to notice a pattern. The same ones always called in, and most were never talked to about it. It was never mentioned. I had my 3rd call in about this time, and it just so happened that the DON chose to inform me of that fact on the day when I had agreed to work 4 16's in one week. I had the call book open, writing down a call in, when she came up and said, "You know you have 3 call ins, right?" I was incensed, but I looked down at the tally sheet, seeing all these others who were never bothered with such mundane details, then looked back at her and said,"Really? Three? Do I get a prize?"
this one in particular sticks with me...t'was a sunday evening, the only rn on the unit but had two very able lpns & a cna with me. so, we have a new 16 year old female patient with a fresh orif of the right leg complete with cast from foot to upper thigh. and many parents,grand parents, assorted friends & relatives - the room was full. and she was unable to pee. as the problem was presented to me and weighing the above situation i sent the cna (who was certed to do caths and very good) two attempts failed, sent first lpn then the second with no luck. i went to see what i could do (i'm male) and immediately sensed opposition to me venturing further. md was notified and request for persons from urology dept. the third person finally was able to insert a foley and all was happy for the moment....but monday i was summoned to directors office. the write-up was excessive attempts (9) to insert catheter. i wrote on the signature line "what was the alternative when you gotta go-you gotta go" since that experience i've adopted the attitude when the blame-game starts becareful when to chew my butt because you may get a mouthful of crap.
Shame on the doctor for not having them do it in the OR-so many of the orthopods don't like to use them(except for long cases or elderly patients) but sometimes the patient would be better off. We do them after they've been put to sleep so they feel nothing..and I know they don't like the increased risk of UTI with a catheter, but that kid had one after 9 attempts at a Foley, I'll bet! Not your fault though.
Specializes in MCH,NICU,NNsy,Educ,Village Nursing.
I worked PRN on a combined L&D/Mother/baby/gyn/plastic surgery unit. I had a pretty crummy orientation to the areas of the unit & was told each time I requested opportunities to work a c/section that unfortunately when I was needed to work on the unit it was because they were too busy & that they probably couldn't orient me to c/s. Same thing with newborn care in L&D. We had to be oriented to C/sections before we could help & to L&D before we could help in those areas. I had been told upon hire that I would be oriented to all areas, except laboring patients. I was informed by the head nurse something like the following:
HN: The other nurses especially on nights don't feel like you would be safe in a delivery because you haven't helped in one.
Me: I actually have but have been refused when I've offered since then. (mind you--i had about 10 years experience as a newborn nurse/level 2 NICU so I knew what I was doing in L&D w/the newborn)
HN: Oh...they also say that you won't help with a C/section
Me: I have asked at least 3 times to be oriented to c/sections here & each time I ask I'm told that they can't because I'm there when they are too busy.
HN: Oh. You've also called in 3 times & if you call in again I have to write you up (I had been sick with bronchitis--(fever & severe cough), my mother died, and this particular call occurred when I had slipped a disc out & couldn't stand/sit /or walk--literally)
Me: WEll, the doctor says I can't work until he releases me. The other times I couldn't help that my mom died & with bronchitis I knew I had no business working with postpartum moms & newborns.
HN: Well, you are still at 3 calls.
Me: Well, I can't help that my mom died. I can't walk/sit/etc. right now. So, are you telling me that you want me to work sick & increase the risk to the patients and fellow staff?
HN: Well, you just do what you gotta do.
I submitted my letter of resignation in order to avoid loss of my reputation beyond what it had already been besmirched.
It happened last night... patient had a continuous bladder irrigation going and the Foley had over 2000 cc's in it. I found it when I was doing his vitals. Of course, I emptied it and charted it. Nurse yelled at me for emptying the Foley because she said she couldn't figure out the true urine from what I charted... DUH ... even I could have figured that out... and I'm just a SPN
Specializes in NICU, PICU, PCVICU and peds oncology.
I've had more than one dumb thing...
1) I was working a night shift in the PICU (not at my current hospital). We were adequately staffed but barely. I was assigned break coverage for the night for both the PICU and the Pediatric Special Care Unit (technologically dependent children). At 0330 the nursing super called to tell my team leader that the "extra" nurse (me) would have to go down to the ER, pick up a patient and transfer her to the surgical floor then admit her and provide care for her for the rest of the shift. Our unit management had already dealt with such ridiculous demands before and there was an agreement that PICU nurses would float, but would not take assignments because of the unpredicitability of PICU's patient population. And under NO circumstances were we to do admissions on other floors. So my team leader reminded the super of this and the fact that I still had breaks to cover, so what was I to do first. The super then agreed that I would go to the Special Care Unit, send those nurses for their breaks, then go to the surgical floor to do tasks to allow one of their regular staff to take the admission. My team leader had put the call on speaker phone; everyone in PICU heard the entire conversation. So at about 0520 I presented myself to the surgical floor and was stunned to have their charge nurse ask me where my patient was. She then proceeded to pitch a fit and called the super again. This time I talked to the super and told her about the speaker phone and that I was not refusing to help them out but I was refusing to take an admission on a floor where I'd never worked before. She told me to go back to PICU. When I got back, my team leader got everyone to write an account of what happened so she could present the facts to our manager. The only thing my manager wanted to know was how long I was actually on the Special Care Unit for their breaks...
2) I interviewed for a position on our ECLS team a few years ago. The application had been made in the early fall, but the interviews kept being pushed off and it didn't end up happening until early February. In between times, I had filed a professional responsibility complaint over an unsafe assignment; the nurse in charge that day was the same nurse who coordinated the ECLS team. You can see where this is going... The day of the interview, I was assigned to a child for whom I had provided the patient care for on seven 12 hour shifts while he was on ECLS, including the day of admission when we recannulated him. I felt like the panel interview (with the nursing, respiratory therapy and medical ECLS directors) went well. Except the part where the nurse said, "A while back you had difficulty with an assignment. How do you think you'd cope with an emergency if you were the ECMO specalist if you couldn't handle that assignment?" The other two looked bewildered. Then a week later, I was called into the office to be told that I was not going to be on the team because I was too flip with my answers, I had made derogatory remarks about respiratory therapists being ECLS specialists (several months before all this, I posted the following here: https://allnurses.com/forums/572751-post4.html and I don't think that sounds derogatory, do you?) and I wasn't a team player. Oh, and I wasn't able to explain how the pump works, while some others had basically been able to describe the entire process from choosing patients to ending the run. (Think they were coached? The two who did that were both RTs.) I disputed these statements and was told there would be no reconsideration, "their" decision was final. But if I wanted to reapply later, I was welcome. Yeah, right! Anyway, of the 8 people they did put on the team at that time, only 1 is still on it. They've recruited twice more since. The other team members have pleaded with me to apply again and I've refused.
3) Last year our (mis)management "discovered" a couple of weeks before Christmas that we were not going to have enough staff to cover the unit for the holidays (our hours are finalized 12 weeks before we work them!) so they were going to be moving people around on the schedule to fill the gaps. Our contract states that if management changes your schedule without 14 days notice, they have to pay you double time for the first shift they change; this had been ignored early in the year when the vacation hours came out, and had gone to grievance. As the union rep for our unit, I emailed the staff to remind them of this obligation management had and to remind them that if they didn't get paid their double time as required, they needed to let our local know. I sent the email at 0545 and at 0655, the patient care manager was standing at my bedside telling me she wanted to talk to me about it. (This is the same person from story #2... she had in the interim been promoted to patient care manager!) When I refused to go into a closed-door meeting with her, she proceeded to rip a strip off me for being antagonistic and insulting toward management and making them look like morons. This little confab took place in the hallway... Funny thing that. Both the patient care manager and the manager who had been responsible for the schedule are now gone... and I'm still there. Oh, and they're going to recruit several more nurses (there are too many RTs on the team now!!) to the ECLS team in the new year... think I should apply now?
Specializes in Med Surg, Ortho, Tele, ICU, Hospice.
I try not to speak ill of places (but ask me if I'd put a family member in such-and-such unit/home/&c and I will tell ya honest!) but my first assignment in LTC was pretty horrid.
It was an entire building under wanderguard (i.e. the pts wore RFID bracelets that only locked the doors they were near, otherwise the unit was unlocked) and constantly understaffed. My whole floor was alzheimer's, and the "men's" assignment was one section - the same pts every day.
One guy, who I later came to really like, both him and his family, was a royal PITA before he got too weak to walk. Wandered, serious fall risk, hip pads and a helmet and you'd better not leave him alone upright sorta guy. Well, one day I was managing three separate feeds in the common room when captain gravity springs from his chair and decides to go for an early afternoon constitutional. As he's tipping over, I leap over, intercept him midfall, hook his chair over with my foot and manage to land him back in it. We're talking Heisman trophy material here.
Thirty seconds later my nursing supervisor, who has been on the floor for thirty seconds in the past two weeks, is raising hell, telling me I need to go 'cool off' somewhere. I was eventually sent home, pending allegations of patient abuse, evidently the supe saw me manhandling the guy and thought I was hurting him. Three days of suspension later, I get a letter from COSA (I think it was COSA) that the investigation into my actions determined I *was* mistreating the pt, but could keep my license and was not going to be charged with anything.
Part of my being forgiven by the grand oversight machine was half a day's inservice to reinforce the point that if I am overwhelmed, I need to ask for help. Where I was going to find help in a 36 bed alzheimer's unit with four aides and two RNs is beyond me.:angryfire
On the upside, this was two years ago, and happened to occur on the opening day of trout season, so I spent the rest of that first afternoon drinking beer and catching fish
I had the nerve as a PCT to actually call the health department on Hospice when I discovered BIOHAZARD WASTE being disposed of not in the manner proper at all. (Bagged into the regular waste bins exposing the community to God only know what. Used Needles were left at pts bedsides and on armchair recliners in pts rooms used needles from Hep C pts who used morphine. The last straw that broke the camel's back:On Yalentine's Day, i found in the personal laundry bin all vomit , from a Hep C pt an honored Veteran, that had putrified, smelling like a biohazard chemical weapon, that had obviously sat there longer than a week, moldy spores , feces in the mix, I showed the resource nurse who informed the day nurse who in turn tried to blame the mess on me, when I was the one who found it, plus i had only worked there less than a week. I held out for my 90 days, called a lawyer, congress, the CEO of Hospice, put my job in jeopardy and gave no one aby cause to miss me working there by announcing that yes it was me, who called these agencies to report on unethical and harrassment and biohazard waste I canno tell a lie... What a dumass i was, now i look the other way, do my job, quietly and quickly... I learned what this so called "profession" is all about early on. Cheap, uncaring, "what the hey these people are dying anyway" I hear everyday from so called superiors.
My stories pale by comparison to many here. Complaining that one's chest hurts after compressions? Puh-leeze.
- First time was for transferring a patient to the floor and not reporting to the receiving nurse that the patient had a vanco dose due an hour after the transfer happened. Meaning - pt arrived on floor at 2000, dose was due at 2100. Ok... courtesy would dictate that I inform her. But to call my manager and complain? How about glancing at the MAR? I even left my med schedule on the cover of the chart.
- Public safety wrote me a ticket for parking backwards in an outdoor parking stall that was adjacent to a field of grass.
- Our hospital uses these little 3x5 slips of paper for non emergent RN to MD communications that we leave in the prog notes section of the chart. The MD tears them out after he reads them, they aren't part of the med record. I received a stable patient at 0200 from the ED. The ED holding orders are good for 12 hours after which we need to contact the attending and get unit orders. Instead of calling the MD on a stable pt at 0200, I left a note with 4 or 5 points that could have easily been missed by the MD. I noted things like a glucerna shake with each meal since the pt was accustomed to that and that the pt was used to taking an Ambien @ night before bed. There were a few other things but I forget now what they were.
The MD rounded after I'd gone home in the AM. He took the note from the chart and marched it to the manager's office with claims that he was being micromanaged and didn't want to see this type of thing again. Strangely enough, he wrote for each of the things I asked for.
My manager actually laughed when she told me about it, but said she HAD to address it. I also now call this MD at all hours for unit orders and for ANY issue. I don't leave him notes at all anymore.
Specializes in Telemetry Step Down Units. Travel Nurse, Home Care.
- Our hospital uses these little 3x5 slips of paper for non emergent RN to MD communications that we leave in the prog notes section of the chart. The MD tears them out after he reads them, they aren't part of the med record. .
This sounds interesting. Other than your run-in, how is it working?
I used to be responsible for ordering all non-pharmacy supplies. My manager called me in and accused me of allowing our stock to run out of endotracheal tubes, and actually said he was going to have to fire me for it. Needless to say, I couldn't believe it!! and I had a copy of the inventory report from 3 days prior where we had at least 1/2 box full of each sizes 6.0-9.0. The RN I had relieved didn't mention anything about them being missing, and there had only been 2 intubation since my inventory....no way that 20+ tubes could have disappeared.
He "gave me an hour" to find them or I'd lose my job. After searching everywhere I found them stuffed behind a large pile of trash bags in the far corner of the room - literally the last place I looked. To make a long story short, I think my manager on his best days had a borderline personality disorder (and was subsequently fired after a LONG downward spiral). When I showed him where they were he said he had no idea how they could've gotten there and I replied "I do." and walked off. after that I thought differently about ever leaving anything unlocked or out in the open.
... even I could have figured that out... and I'm just a SPN
Other than your run-in, how is it working?
GadgetRN71, ASN, RN
1,841 Posts
Shame on the doctor for not having them do it in the OR-so many of the orthopods don't like to use them(except for long cases or elderly patients) but sometimes the patient would be better off. We do them after they've been put to sleep so they feel nothing..and I know they don't like the increased risk of UTI with a catheter, but that kid had one after 9 attempts at a Foley, I'll bet! Not your fault though.