Working as a new nurse with less seniority..Help!!!!!!!!!!

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Hi everyone, I am a new grad and has anyone experience of being called from work saying that your shift is cancel because of low patient census? That is kind of sad you know, because you want to learn and work, and as a less senior nurse you get to experience that. Some of my coworkers said that they had the same experience when they started like not only work being cancelled but also a lot of floating and now they have been working for 15+++ years. Also, in our unit Med/Surg, our census is unpredictable, low census now but an hour later it would be full again on our unit. Also, our manager tries to schedule as many nurses in one shift which they dont need and as a result the new nurses end up being cancelled. It is just sad. Being cancelled and floated to other unit. Is that the same with other hospitals or facility? Any advise........ Thanks

Yeah, they experienced the same thing here on this hospital and on other hospital they worked for.

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Specializes in ICU.

We hardly ever have a low census. Our staffing is 1 to 1, plus charge nurse. When there is a low census the charge looks at the staffing and cancels anyone doing a 'bank' shift. After that they ring people and ask if they would like to take annual leave for the shift. People are floated to the wards if we still have too many staff. I for one would rather take annual leave than work on a ward, value my pin number too much to work in an unfamiliar area.

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However, most of the nurses said that it usually gets low on summer and it picks up too. Our floor is so unpredictable it gets low today and later we would be full again like in a day the floor woule be full. There are times when our ER, ICU, and Tele would be not busy too so the census are low this time on summer. I just feels like new people on the job gets to be cancelled and that is sad. If they would make it "take turns" when being cancelled I would feels sad when I am already a senior and have been working there for more than 10Yrs.

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Specializes in Psychiatry.

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they can do that? wouldn't 20 hrs. be considered dangerous if you didn't feel safe working that many hrs.?

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Specializes in Neuro, Cardiology, ICU, Med/Surg.

Our unit has a "downsize" list and people who have been "downsized" won't get asked until their time comes around again. When someone gets downsized, it comes off of their vacation time. Newbies tend not to get downsized for a while since we don't have much if any vacation time.

On another note with respect to seniority I have my own vent to share. The way we do the fall/winter holidays is that the unit is split into two "teams," team A and team B. Team A works Xmas and Xmas eve and team B works Thanksgiving and New Years (and New Year's Eve). I'm on team A, meaning that I work Xmas/Xmas Eve this year. Theoretically, that means I get Thanksgiving off.

When I filled out my time plan, I requested the days after Thanksgiving off, being that my family lives in NJ (I live in Boston). My daughter is in college in northern New Hampshire and the only time I'll be able to see her until the spring is Thanksgiving (she will spend the Xmas/New Year's break with her mother in Arizona). So she will travel to Boston the Wed before Thanksgiving, and her, my wife and I will go to NJ on Thanksgiving morning. I explained this to the scheduling people. It's not as if my 74 year old mother, my sister and her whole family can pile into two or three cars, find someone to feed and take care of the animals on their farm and hop up to Boston to have Thanksgiving dinner with my wife, daughter and me. In the meantime, I was yanked into working Halloween night and the Saturday night after... no complaints, figuring the lack of seniority and the fact that nobody wants to work then. There was also an appeal to work the Friday and Saturday nights after New Year's. Not my first choice of what to do that weekend, but I volunteered, thinking it would make me look like a team player and put me lower on the hit list when other staffing needs arise.

I thought wrong... I got an email yesterday saying that due to seniority and the fact that we were short nurses the evening before and the day after Thanksgiving. I still held out some hope that I was put on the evening before Thanksgiving. Wrong again. I was forced to work the day after Thanksgiving thus #%^ing up my entire Thanksgiving plans and ensuring that I won't be able to spend any of the holidays with my family. I am certain that I am the only nurse on the staff who can claim that. I'm told that I can always appeal to my colleagues for a switch. Great, now I have to be the needy one groveling to the people that I just want acceptance from... the same people who ignored the requests by management to take on that day to begin with.

I was told that seniority comes into play in situations like this, but I was also told that it's not the only deciding factor and that they try not to beat up on the newbies all the time. :down::angryfire

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