Work ethic of team members

[CaNP]

I work in an outpatient specialized mental health clinic with a small team that provides treatment for children and adults. My team consists of another NP, a psychologist, social worker and Registered Dietitian. I do love my team and my job. My question is, how do you address team members who are doing the bare minimum? What is suprizing is that when we are in meetings with managers or our program directors, these team members ;psychologist and other NP)are most vocal to speak about what we do for our clients (which they rarely participate in). We (myself, SW and RD) are very much interested in enhancing the services offered by our clinic but I don't know how to address other team members without offending.

PS. I have not discussed my observation of NP and Psychologist with my other team members.

Any suggestions?

[traumaRUs, MSN, APRN]

Who is the boss?

[Neats, BSN]

I had a nurse and EMT I supervised tell me if I assigned them a new duty I must take away a duty from them. I shadowed them on the night shift, they had about three hours of work spread out over an eight hour shift as long as an emergency did not arise, the last emergency was 14 days prior to me shadowing them. Although I appreciate feedback and acknowledge your job can become saturated in that we have too much on out plate, it is important for co-workers to pull their own load. I would have HR look at the job design/requirements and their current duties. The employee needs to write down what they do on a daily basis as well, compare the two. Clear crucial communication a little at a time with expectations of when new tasks/projects arise with accompanied list of who will do what and in a time frame provides some sense of responsibility for all involved.

I have also managed a physician group who were becoming "silo's" for themselves. It was problematic in that there was no continuity, no one wanted to step up and take responsibility for anything. This made for an uncomfortable working situation. We held meetings and started out real slow talking about how we wanted our practice to be, the ones who seemed intrested in the topic I would assigned a simple task for that topic and followed up with them in private and in meetings where they presented a short update that was always positive. It took some time and 2 physicians left because I was a practice manager who they felt was a dictator, today that practice is thriving and has a five star rating. Keeping people grounded in that less is more is a great start.

[Psychcns]

CaNP. Is there any way you can influence the team? How is work assigned? Maybe those of you who want to do more should just go ahead and not expect everyone to participate.

[CaNP]

@Psychcns

We have a planning day with our team in Seotember and our manager will be invited. Hopefully we all can discuss changes for our clinic and hold others accountable for doing more work.

Will see see how that work out.

[CaNP]

The boss is the Nurse Manager.

NPs and the nurse manager report to the program director for mental health.

[oldpsychnurse]

I've found in my many years of psych nursing that management knows what management wants to know. Management is satisfied with the results your team is providing so they have no inclination to delve into who accomplishes what. I'm sorry, but until you get new management that wants to be involved and improve services, you probably won't get much interest from above in improving anybody's work ethic.

[Julia77]

Can you frame your concerns based on patient care, and patient needs? What compromises in patient care or in team function happen because of these concerns?

Julia