Workplace Behaviors We All Know and Love

xtxrn, ASN, RN · Aug 6, 2011

Do you ever encounter what seems to be incompetence on your job or when dealing with others in your personal life?
What about laziness? Lying? Lack of caring about the patient or consumer? Other bad qualities in workers?
I'm thinking of a recent situation and how it was handled. It has shown me that staff (not just in the Nursing department) are so often really terrible at communicating. Paperwork is not processed in a timely manner, necessary phone calls or emails are not answered, and informing someone who really needs to know of all the details does not occur.
In my long life, I have seen labs and x ray results wind up on the wrong chart and have heard of the wrong part being operated on. Any nurse who comes here regularly has heard of these and a whole lot more, including some real sicko or juvenile happenings perpetrated by nurses or other personnel.
And we often hear how various crimes are committed in the world at large. Some of the crimes are just so ridiculous. You fell out of love with me so I'll burn downt the multi-family apartment building you live in. Why not just mope around for a couple of days and then go out and meet some new people?
Or a little boy taking a piano lesson across the street from the scene of a gas station robbery in the Oakland, CA area is made paraplegic by a stray bullet from the incompetent robber. Etc. The lad's name is Chris Rodriguez and he's probably about 12 now. Imagine all the adjustments he must make, all the turmoil of the teen years to come, + being paraplegic and for such a horrible reason. He didn't dive into shallow water or do anything wrong except be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Munchhausen Syndrome type events, like Genene Ann Jones, LPN of Texas, who used Heparin and succinylcholine to try to be a heroine. She's scheduled for early release, BTW, due to mandatory release laws in Texas, where she's been locked up for a few years for serial murder. Truly scary. I thought Texas hung 'em high a lot. Wonder what line of work she'll pursue. Hopefully, she never will be working with patients anywhere ever again.
Then there are the Ted Bundy's of the world, maiming, murdering, mutilating perhaps more than 100 young women and then practicing necrophiliac sex or cannibalism with the corpses. I mean, you can't dream this stuff up.
Not sure how I got onto the psychiatric and criminal side of things. Maybe I'm thinking that the concealing of vitally necessary information from a patient is about as bad? In a certain way, maybe it is.
Anyway, my question to you is what your own experiences have been with incompetent or even those who intentionally withhold vital information from you. Thanks to all for sharing.

I think Geneen has been in for at least 25 years-(I think it was 1983) not enough time, but not a just a few :). I worked at the hospital in Kerrville that had to deal with the results of her crimes. San Antonio dropped the ball on her, by not investigating strange deaths that she was in some way connected. Kerrville hasn't recovered yet- or the doc she worked for there...I've worked with people who were either EMTs picking up the kids, or nurses who worked with the doc- they still don't agree that the doc did NOT know what Geneen was doing....I read both of the 'true crime' books about her (one was made into a movie). The docs in there were guys I dealt with a lot...they all (not just docs) took a long time warming up to new nurses to the area...

Her license is gone. The mandatory release was changed in 1987 (September- 5 months after the trial of the guy who attacked me- so he got out). Now, there are crimes that are not eligible. She would be in that category if she had committed the crimes after the law changed... Not fair... She is hated extensively and without mercy- which is understandable. There were a lot of kids she had something to do with that had fatal or near fatal events when she was on. It takes the parole board about 3 seconds to deny her parole petitions. She will still be on parole- and TX does have a decent tracking system. I'm not sure if she'd be placed on the highest level- 24/7 monitors (not just checking in the morning to see if someone went off grid).

I will say that TX does a decent job of letting victims know what is going on as long as they have contact info.

I had one odd duck nurse who claimed she had 2 kids in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex area, and she visited one severely handicapped kid EVERY DAY (that would be about a 12-14 hour round trip from Kerrville- with time to visit, and do an 8 hour shift??? OK....sure :) She then tells me she's pregnant, and has to go to the ER in the middle of the shift for some pregnancy issue.... something was just wonky about her, so I called the ED and asked if they could do a pregnancy test while she was down there....not pregnant....

Then there was the DON at a LTC who asked me for the keys to his cabinet in his office...the discontinued drugs were kept there until the corporate pharmacist came to record and destroy them. I didn't think anything of it- it was his desk/office/cabinet- whatever. Pretty soon, the floor nurses are telling me that the d/c'd drugs in their med room were piling up...so I went to ask him if he wanted me to log them in...he shut the door and pulled out a .45 semi-automatic pistol. :eek: Asked me if I had a problem with him logging things himself...NOPE- not me....We had a new administrator who didn't know me well...the ADON was there, and it took me a couple of days to get up the nerve to tell her, and then the admin. By then, the DON had turned in his resignation which the admin took and told him to just go. (great- now I'm stuck being the acting DON- blecchhhhh). When we went to check the cabinet, he had rewritten all of my records, so who knows what he took. He d/c'd a lady's sublingual ms...and kept the pharmacy 'cards' that LTC uses.... that whole thing was a mess...

ledzepfan · Aug 6, 2011

I had never heard of Genene Ann Jones, so I googled her name.......

unbelievable........just unbelievable....I actually had a knot in my stomach

when reading about her case.

dudette10, MSN, RN · Aug 6, 2011

Do you ever encounter what seems to be incompetence on your job or when dealing with others in your personal life?

I'm not going to talk about work here, but what I've seen in friends in my personal life is a pervasive "victim" mentality. Everything that goes wrong in their lives is due to someone else's actions.

Example: a friend's marriage was on the rocks, so what does she do? Cheat on him! Now, the marriage is irreparable, and it's because he did this/he did that. Really?

Another example: An out-of-control, snotty teenager who doesn't do anything that her mom says. "Consistency" isn't in the mother's vocabulary, so she lays down the law verbally, doesn't follow through, then wonders why her kid continues not to do what she asks. It's apparently the all the kid's fault.

Another example: A newly-divorced friend never has any money for the things her kids need. Well, when you spend part of your child support money on your bi-yearly weekend in Vegas with the girls because "I need a break," why is it your ex's responsibility to fork over even more money with a child support payment that is currently $1600 per month?

I have made these exact points to the friends in question, and they still don't get it.

~Mi Vida Loca~RN, ASN, RN · Aug 6, 2011

Someone at work stole my 5hr energy drink

xtxrn, ASN, RN · Aug 7, 2011

Someone at work stole my 5hr energy drink

You should be able to cut back to 3 or 7 hour shifts when that happens

carolmaccas66, BSN, RN · Aug 7, 2011

Hey Kooky. When I was about 12 or 13 or so, I couldn't get my head around how these evil people could maim, kill and torture others and why people were just not out there stopping them! It used to literally haunt my dreams. I realise now that these people's choices 2 hurt others are exactly that - their choices, and that there is no explanation as to why bad things happen to some people. Many psych patients suffering from PTSD ask me: 'Why did this (particular incident, whatever) happen to ME??' and of course, I can't answer them. Some have asked me why their God (insert name of your deity) has abandoned them. I personally do not believe in one God per se, but I've always tried to say to others that life is never a straight line: everybody has their ups and downs and life goes in waves. But once you accept that bad things happen to everyone, life can be a bit more calmer and you accept it more. And then I let them rave on, and move on to how they can deal with their trauma. But traumatic events become PART of you, they never leave you and will never be wiped out. I never tell people 'to forget' what's happened to them, as when u deal with a trauma, you can confront it and it gives you power and enables you to come to terms with it.

I don't think we will ever comprehend how people like Ted Bundy think because we're not living their particular circumstances. And from what I've read, he was considered SANE by quite a few top notch psychiatrists.

I was in the ED/ER last week and we were missing paperwork from a client. They said ask the unit secretary, so I went to her & SAID we were missing paperwork from a current patient. She got me chasing around another part of the hospital, & I found out SHE meant discharged patients! I went back and said why on earth would I be asking re d/c'd patients??!

Also had a patient who thought their tumour had disappeared, Doc couldn't understand why the CT scan showed no tumour, then the cleaner came up behind him (as he was in the corridor at the xray box @ the time), and do you know what she said? That's not the right xray, it belongs to somebody else! Then he had to go tell this poor patient his tumour hadn't disappeared just because someone else didn't check the xray was in the right packet.

Sometimes we're so busy, we don't realise how our actions affect others I don't think.

R u stressed Kooky, do u need a holiday perhaps?