Work frustration poll

[adrienurse]

Who is the biggest source of stress and frustration at your workplace?

[Little One2]

My frustation at my current job (medicine floor), is the management and politics. When it comes to dealing with families, I tend to lose my patience sometimes.

There are some good nurses there, but there are a few who ruin the team effort by not pulling their weight.

[hapeewendy]

surely you cannot be talking about me littleone now can you???

haha I know what team you must have just worked with

:)

[Spidey's mom, ADN, BSN, RN]

I think you have to separate administration from workplace politics and I'd then vote for workplace politics. So I voted for co-workers because there is an ongoing clash between night shift and day shift that is soooo frustrating. I oriented a very nice new RN two years ago when I was still working full time and overtime (90-100 hours a pay period - he had to work my shift and was amazed by the hours). One of the things I tried to emphasize is that each shift has its own special frustrations, one shift is not "better" than the other in terms of patient care, and everyone, absolutely everyone makes mistakes. Well, after orientation he is now working nights and has fallen into the "blame dayshift" mentality. And there are nurses on dayshift who "blame nightshift" too. That is the most frustrating aspect of my job. Writing each other up all the time for stuff that could be shared during report and fixed. Now major errors that hinge on patient care are different, but the petty little squabbles that erupt make it not fun to come to work. I also don't like how the government comes in a makes all these ridiculous regulations so we have to hire so many "paperwork" nurses to keep us out of trouble with the surveyors (part of the administration overhead which could be cut, in my opinion). You can get written up if you don't have enough memo boards with all the memos ever put out or if your refrigerator is just a few degrees off the regulated temp. How efficient is that?

[Little One2]

I agree with you stevielynn,

I'm my floor, the day staff blame and acuse the night staff for not doing anything all night.

Meanwhile, Night staff are usually very busy answering call bells, and doing rounds. It is even busier when there are only four nurses on.

[nursedawn67, LPN]

My biggest frustrations is the families/patients, there is always some family member that insists mom/dad is dying because PT is pushing a little hard and need you right now...so what if the resident down the hall is having chest pain. You go down the hall and mom/dad are sitting there just fine and grinning. Or how about the resident who recieves routine pain meds and never asks for PRN pain meds EXCEPT when the family is there.....but it is amazing that we never actually hear the patient ask it is always the family member asking for us to give something.......we have got in the habit of going down and asking the resident "do you need something?" Or the resident that is alert and oriented that will suddenly get a case of the poor memory and forget if she had meds 15 minutes ago....and if you don't rush down there no matter what you are doing, she will call the doctor and tell him you refuse to give her anything. Or I have seen one roomate tell the other "your dying" until she has the other in a panic and starts getting chest pain.

Anyhow...administration/staff ran a very close 2nd....how about a person that is supposed to stock a room and doesn't bother to stock tube feeding formula? So what now, those residents that recieve nourshiment that way get to fast? No copies of paperwork...you have to go find an original and make copies and waste a bunch of time because after you get things together you realize the copy machine broke down for the gadzillionth time!

Once again....anyhow...........

Sorry about the rant...I bet everyone of us have had similiar experiences. That is what is great about these boards we can all identify with eachother.

Have a great day!! :)

[prmenrs, RN]

As you may know, I retired 6 months ago!! :) HAPPY DANCE!!!

I have to say the thing that drove the craziest wasn't the babies--LOVED 'em, wasn't the families--altho the "Hi-maintanence" ones were less than fun,

IT WAS THE FREEKIN' 2-FACED ADMINISTRATORS, THE NEVER-ENDING 'COMPETENCIES', THE JACHO A**W*PES AND THEIR PETTY 'DOCUMENTATIONS', THE 'MANDATORY' MEETINGS. GRRRRR

[cwazycwissyRN, RN]

Attempting to keep out of the political arena is an ongoing battle. I remember in nursing school, when I announced to one of my instructors, that I was going to stay out of the hospital politics, his response. First he laughed, then ask if I had opinions on pt. care. I said of course I do. He said then you will be involved in politics. Booooy was he right. I've learned I have to pick my battles wisely and less frequently do to the ever present bottomless pit of burn out one falls into when they have beaten their head into the wall one too many times. I also blame the politics for my state of mind. cwazzzzzzzy

[Hellllllo Nurse, BSN, RN]

I chose "other" as my biggest source of frustration. My biggest frustration is: Nurse:pt ratios, and lack of resources and supplies.

I can deal w/ any situation except being spread so thin that no one in my charge can get decent care, despite my best efforts.

Also, it doesn't matter how much time and staff are available, if needed supplies and equipment aren't available, you can't do your job.

[RNFROG3, BSN, RN]

Family members can be frustrating but by far the biggest stressor is not having supplies! The last three nights I worked at one time or another we ran out of heplocks, aerobic culture bottles, click locks, 10 cc syringes, and tongue depressors to name a few things! In addition the first night I worked the lab lost both CBC machines so the labs had to be sent to our sister hopital across town, the computer system was down so we had no tracking of our ED patients, and we only had one CT and X-ray machine because they were wiring for a new MRI area. To give the x-ray folk credit they worked their collective tails off and ran alot of the rays portable but they still had to across the hospital to run the films because their main developer was hooked to the power that was shut off. IE: longer ER waits-more irritable patients.

SHEESH! I was so happy my three days were over! I complained heavily to our interim dept manager this am. How can I be expected to perform without eqipment! All this from a hospital that was selected to be in the top 100 hospitals in the States. Amazing what happens when the cameras are off! or if we are this bad ... what happens to hospitals not in the top 100??

Sorry had to vent!

[melsay, LPN]

Originally posted by baseline

For me it's the politics....explaining the obvious to the obtuse and waiting for logic to sink in........

Administration/Managers know what logic is ? lol

How is it WE do the job that they know NOTHING about, and they tell us how to fix things, or do things better??? Gripes my A@@.

[RNFROG3, BSN, RN]

okay i com back after two days off ---we got new IV pumps had to go to training for them but they are nice. In class they said tubing etc will be basically the same except the ports have luer locks -still no problem , safer right? I come in the middle of the entire state visiting our er Tuesday night to find the entire sytem of starting IV from hepwell to bag is all new and difficult to work with-everythhing screws into the other parts. Ever try to hold pressure above the site(Don't like to make messes ya know)untwist the cap off the hepwell and turn it into the catheter without spinning the catheter and or the iv sit en process. They also took away our syringes. Gave us these syringes w/o needles we have to open two packages one had a port the has a sharp point that accesses the NS vials but not the medicine tubes. So ya need to open another needle and syringe for that.We had these 10cc syringes that were needleless and had a blue arrow that would punture both vials and tubes and they were attatched so it wsa only one package to open.

I'm all for safety and I truly llike the luer locks but I'm thiking someone didn't gofrom the beginning to the end on this whole thing. It's a lot more time spent grabbing and opening and putting things together then before . Shouldn't ther be a balance between safety and nurses time spent get the product ready ? Sorry I had to vent went to sleep on this and still woke up frustrated.

[Gardengal]

I voted for other because my frustrations come from a combination of sources. My primary frustration comes from the fact that ancillary departments say they can't do something, or require nursing to do something and we just historically and always do it, so that care is accomplished......examples would be:

Lab results don't appear in the computer. Labs were sent by previous shift. No pending notice is in the computer so you call lab. They say thelab was cancelled and you need to re-enter it and redraw. You do so and lo and behold the previous result appears. The lab then calls and yells at you and wants to know who drew the new lab test and why. You respond because you told us to.!!! Then you need to get everyone involved in looking at the issue, but it doesn't seem to change.

Another example...you go for an item in the utility room. There are none....you call for the supply and they say the hospital is out of it. You ask for th esubstitute item and are told there isn't one. You send an aide around looking for th eitem to care for your patient from other departments. An hour later you have what you needed. You follow the steps to fix the process and you encounter the same difficulty on another item 1 hour later.

This problem that recurs with most departments drains you, so that when you have to deal with the difficult families it just tips you over the edge. If the original issues hadn't happened the family problem wouldn't drive you as crazy.

You control some of the issues on a local/unit level on an as needed basis but it comes back constantly. You attempt to deal with it through administrative routes to truly 'fix' the problem, but after the run around you get from other departments looking out for their turf and workload you finally either give up or go nuts-knowing that it will come back to you because you're the one there taking care of the patient.

So what category is it? Other.......I guess my frustration is that the issues of other departments tend to culminate at the end point-which is patient care....and the way to fix or control the problem is not in my hands but elsewhere and I can't see the improvements fast enough.