Showing posts with label nurses. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nurses. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 29, 2017
Racist Nurse Says White Boys Should Be Thrown To The Wolves
Racism much? A nurse at Indiana University Health Methodist Hospital was found tweeting extremely offensive and racist remarks. The recently hired nurse, Taiyesha Baker, was posting under the account "Night Nurse." She wrote, "Every white woman raises a detriment to society when they raise a son. Someone with the HIGHEST propensity to be a terrorist, rapist, racist, killer, and domestic violence all star. Historically every son you had should be sacrificed to the wolves Bitch." Needless to say the nurse was fired from her job shortly after her tweet was discovered.
Funny how somebody with such extreme racist thoughts can categorize an entire demographic as being racist even though they may only be innocent children. I could say this is the pot calling the kettle black but I don't want to be accused of racism and get sacrificed to the wolves.
Monday, November 27, 2017
Bitcoin Envy Hits The Nurses' Break Room
By now you've probably heard about bitcoin and its road to instant riches. The cryptocurrency has risen from practically nothing a couple of years ago to over $9000 per coin today. Its value has increased nearly 900% this year alone. I won't go into detail about what bitcoin is or how it was invented by one man out of practically thin air. You can read about its origins here. Needless to say I'm kind of an old fart and have not jumped on the bitcoin bandwagon which is probably just as well as that train left the station months ago. I'm perfectly satisfied with the unfashionable way of wealth accumulation such as real estate and stocks.
But that doesn't mean that plenty of other people aren't willing to jump on for that heady ride. Today in the nurses' break room, I saw plenty of envious eyes as one young tech savvy nurse held court. He was extolling the virtues of his bitcoin investment made a few months ago when it was less than $2000. He was throwing out terms like Mt. Gox and ethereum as the other nurses hung on his every word. He was already talking about cashing out and retiring on his newfound bitcoin wealth.
I could see the sad resignation in the other nurses as they realized they had missed the investment of a lifetime. They all talked dreamily about how wonderful it would be if they could retire right now. How smart that young nurse was to invest in something that could allow him to stop working at such a tender age. Soon somebody piped up and said, "It's not too late!" Sure it is currently about $10,000. But who's to say that it won't double again in the next few months.
As their breaks finished, they headed back to work, shoulders slumped, as they had to face the reality that they missed their chance at stupendous bitcoin riches. They'll just have to retire the old fashioned way, with hard work and diligent savings. As the religious writer Nathan Whitley says, "The pain of regret is far worse than the pain of discipline."
Friday, May 6, 2016
Celebrating Nurses Week
It is good to be a nurse. As Nurses Week winds down, I want to show you how much our hospital LOVES our nurses. Compared to the pathetic tray of bagels the facility offered physicians for Doctor's Day, this is what the nurses got for lunch, just today.
Nothing like an all you can eat taco bar as a term of endearment. And this was only in one unit in the hospital. All the other units got similar lunch buffets. Oh yes, our hospital just adores our nurses. If you feed the ones you love, then we absolutely revere our RN's. This is what our nurses got yesterday.
We just love to keep our nurses fat and happy. Apparently it must be much harder to retain or acquire new nurses than it is to keep doctors placated. Besides these two examples, another day they received a full English breakfast buffet with all the cholesterol and salt the hospital cafeteria could possibly unload on our nursing staff. The nurses also received free tote bags and other swag with the hospital's logo on it just so they will remember who is treating them so royally.
Why become a doctor and get taken for granted when one can become an RN in half the time and one third the cost and actually get some appreciation at work?
Why become a doctor and get taken for granted when one can become an RN in half the time and one third the cost and actually get some appreciation at work?
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| Our sad Doctor's Day bagels. |
Sunday, July 20, 2014
The Revolving Door Of Nursing Managers
Our procedure center is a pretty stable unit. We have employees who have worked there for ten to twenty years. We all know each other like family. We've seen each other's children being born, grow up, and graduate from school. It is a very comforting place to work.
But one position that seems to have constant turnover is our nursing manager. The nursing manager, as the title implies, manages the nurses' activities. She (they have almost always been she) makes the call schedule. She determines what time nurse comes in and when they leave. She makes sure the payroll is made out properly. She plots the yearly vacation schedules. She intervenes in interpersonal conflicts at work. In essence, the nursing manager is in charge of almost all aspects of the nurses' work.
Unfortunately this important position has seen a continual flux in our center. The problem, I feel, is that whoever accepts the job is not really in it for the long haul. Our nursing managers tend to view the job as resume padding, not the final role for a career well done. They always seem to be looking for the next rung up the ladder of their nursing career.
Because so many of them view this assignment as a temporary stop, we don't get the best people to help manage our busy unit. We basically get two types of personalities that accept this appointment. One is the politician. She is always on the go, attending every possible meeting she can to shake hands and have face time with her superiors so that she can get promoted as quickly as possible. Her office door is always locked because she is somewhere else cavorting with people who might give her the promotion she so desperately craves. The job of the nursing manager then falls upon the most senior nurse on the unit, who usually does a pretty good job as she's had to do this many times before.
On the other end of the spectrum is the micromanager. And this one is actually worse. The micromanager will do everything possible to demonstrate to everybody, especially her bosses, that she is fully in charge of the unit. Even if her decisions make absolutely no medical or common sense. For instance, one of our recent nursing manager's first executive decision on the unit was to reverse the order of the bed numbers in the unit. What used to be bed numbers one through ten became numbers ten through one. There was absolutely no reason to do it. It did not improve patient safety or increase the efficiency of patient care. On the contrary, for weeks afterwards people went to the wrong bed because everybody was so used to the old numbering system. But the manager showed that she was the boss and could make people do whatever she wanted.
Another time the nursing manager suddenly decided that every patient who went to the recovery room after a procedure needed to be hooked up to a transport monitor for vital signs during the short traveling distance, which is literally just down the hall. A defibrillator also had to accompany the patient each time. It didn't matter if the anesthesiologist was going with the patient or that the patient was stable, awake, and breathing room air after a short MAC case. The manager insisted that this was the new safety standard being adopted nationwide and we had to follow it. When the anesthesiologists objected, she simply ordered her nurses to put the monitors on the patients themselves. Needless to say, the nurses weren't terribly happy about this either since they were the ones who had to bring all those heavy monitors back to the unit after dropping the patient off in recovery. Many monitors were lost because of her new rules.
But like the weather in the Midwest, if you don't like what you currently have, just wait around a little bit and a new one will show up shortly. The average length of employment of our nursing managers is usually about eighteen months to two years. They have all gotten promoted to a higher position or have been fired unceremoniously after stepping on too many toes. We're still waiting for the one manager who can find satisfaction in her work without constantly longing for a higher position. I'm not holding my breath.
But one position that seems to have constant turnover is our nursing manager. The nursing manager, as the title implies, manages the nurses' activities. She (they have almost always been she) makes the call schedule. She determines what time nurse comes in and when they leave. She makes sure the payroll is made out properly. She plots the yearly vacation schedules. She intervenes in interpersonal conflicts at work. In essence, the nursing manager is in charge of almost all aspects of the nurses' work.
Unfortunately this important position has seen a continual flux in our center. The problem, I feel, is that whoever accepts the job is not really in it for the long haul. Our nursing managers tend to view the job as resume padding, not the final role for a career well done. They always seem to be looking for the next rung up the ladder of their nursing career.
Because so many of them view this assignment as a temporary stop, we don't get the best people to help manage our busy unit. We basically get two types of personalities that accept this appointment. One is the politician. She is always on the go, attending every possible meeting she can to shake hands and have face time with her superiors so that she can get promoted as quickly as possible. Her office door is always locked because she is somewhere else cavorting with people who might give her the promotion she so desperately craves. The job of the nursing manager then falls upon the most senior nurse on the unit, who usually does a pretty good job as she's had to do this many times before.
On the other end of the spectrum is the micromanager. And this one is actually worse. The micromanager will do everything possible to demonstrate to everybody, especially her bosses, that she is fully in charge of the unit. Even if her decisions make absolutely no medical or common sense. For instance, one of our recent nursing manager's first executive decision on the unit was to reverse the order of the bed numbers in the unit. What used to be bed numbers one through ten became numbers ten through one. There was absolutely no reason to do it. It did not improve patient safety or increase the efficiency of patient care. On the contrary, for weeks afterwards people went to the wrong bed because everybody was so used to the old numbering system. But the manager showed that she was the boss and could make people do whatever she wanted.
Another time the nursing manager suddenly decided that every patient who went to the recovery room after a procedure needed to be hooked up to a transport monitor for vital signs during the short traveling distance, which is literally just down the hall. A defibrillator also had to accompany the patient each time. It didn't matter if the anesthesiologist was going with the patient or that the patient was stable, awake, and breathing room air after a short MAC case. The manager insisted that this was the new safety standard being adopted nationwide and we had to follow it. When the anesthesiologists objected, she simply ordered her nurses to put the monitors on the patients themselves. Needless to say, the nurses weren't terribly happy about this either since they were the ones who had to bring all those heavy monitors back to the unit after dropping the patient off in recovery. Many monitors were lost because of her new rules.
But like the weather in the Midwest, if you don't like what you currently have, just wait around a little bit and a new one will show up shortly. The average length of employment of our nursing managers is usually about eighteen months to two years. They have all gotten promoted to a higher position or have been fired unceremoniously after stepping on too many toes. We're still waiting for the one manager who can find satisfaction in her work without constantly longing for a higher position. I'm not holding my breath.
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