Well here we go with my first blog post. In relating this blog to management or leadership in nursing...I would say my work place is suffering from a serious mismanagement problem. We have lost a large portion of our patient population to a competing facility. This happened in March of 08. The corporation agreed to guarantee all staffs hours for one year in exchange for not having a mass exodus from our unit. They did give us our hours but only for seven months, now we are losing 1-2 shifts out of 3 (12 hour) shifts per week to cancellation. We cancel 5-6 RN's per shift.
This problem could have been averted had management been proactive 7 months ago. The company was paying us to come to work as "work crew" for 7 months when they could have been orienting us to other units with staffing shortages. Their fear was that we would be busy with orientation and be short on our current unit. Yes it was a possibility but creativity could have solved that problem.
The most frustrating part of this whole process has been the mismanagement of funds. We may not have been able to walk onto another unit and taken an RN load but with patients in hallway beds couldn't we have been of some assistance? Instead we goofed around for months! Idle hands are never happy hands and our patient satisfaction scores reflect this.
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It is nive to have you back this semester. That sounds rough. I am shocked not more Nurses have left or at least transfered to other positions if they are getting cancelled so much.
ReplyDeleteNursing is nursing and I agree that you should be able to take at least some hallway patients. Have you discussed this with managment lately?
I agree with Crystal. Have you spoken to management lately? They are crazy not to utilize willing nurses, instead of cancelling them and losing patients to other facilities.
ReplyDeleteIf your unit is so slow that you are bing cancelled, those hallway patients should be able to be cared for in your unit. Our PACU has overflow patients when ICU and floor beds get tight, but we never have patients in the hallways!