my-life-as-a-hospital-staffer

[my-life-as-a-hospital-staffer]

6/5/20

Today at shift change after putting nurses on standby and staffing a unit to full, the. Ight charge calls me.

Charge: Hey so when X left home sick last night she told the night Supervisor she wasn't going to make it into work tonight.

Me: Gee, would have been nice of that supervisor to tell the rest of us that. I'll call in X for you.

Now that nurse gets 1.5x pay on call in because someone couldn't write a sticky note saying "X is sick for 6/6."

Ugh. I hate days like this.

[my-life-as-a-hospital-staffer]

4/15/20

As I emerge to take a breath from the depths of staffing nightmare brought to you by COVID(™️), I encounter a strange occurence...

A lady dressed fully in a purple bunny onesie suit with ears 2 feet long being tackled to the floor by security. Apparently she was causing hell. They eventually got her out of the suit, minus the ears and she remained harassing front desk of the ER.

#hospital #hospitalstories #RNs #ED #ER #Psych #justanotherday #staffing #staffing solutions #whyme #whyus

[my-life-as-a-hospital-staffer]

3/19/20

Great conversation at work today about N95s while talking about how we just got a miracle shipment of PPE from the state after harassing the state for it.

Me: Do N95s have an expiration date?

L: N95s are like spoiled milk, a little past it's just fine.

(We all side eye L)

J: No, not like spoiled milk.

B: Like spoiled Ramen.

Me: But ramen doesn't spoi...

B: LIKE TWINKIES

Me: So they TECHNICALLY have to have one but they really don't NEED one.

J & B: Yes!

Great news guys, your N95 is a twinkie. Kind of.

#hospitalstories #hospitals #staffing #staffing solutions #staffingstories #PPE #N95 #N95s #Twinkies #Ramen #SpoiledMilk

[my-life-as-a-hospital-staffer]

3/18/20

It's been some time since I posted a story mostly because Covid-19 and I'm just too busy to remember Tumblr exists. But I had two stories already that happened today and I've only been clocked in for 1.5 hours.

1) At the coffee stand. Lady and friend walk up to the counter and ask, "Espresso Milkshake! What's that!?" Very excitedly. The barista, bless her soul, responded straight faced, "A milkshake with espresso."

The lady then replies with "What's it made of!!??"

Barista once again: "Coffee... and milk." Good lord.

2) Gal comes in my office to return her checked out ACLS book. I locate her check out sheet and note she didn't fill out her Department or when her class was. These are payroll deduction forms in the case of you damaging and/or not returning the book. I sign off on it coming back and mention casually, "Just FYI, next time you check out a book, please fill out the whole form."

She gives me a blank stare and says, "Oh I was here with another lady and she didn't tell me I needed to do that."

Lady. Nobody should have to tell you. It's a form. It's blank with lines that tell you what it wants. It says:

Name ______

Date _______

Book # _____

Department ______

Date of class ______

It's not rocket science!

#hospitalstories #staffing solutions #staffing #shenanigans #storytime #didyoureallysaythat #cnaproblems #nursestories #seriously #whyme

[my-life-as-a-hospital-staffer]

2/11/20

I do schedules every month for a unit. The draft schedule before the official went out yesterday. A CNA emails me and mentions they specifically can't work Tuesdays and Thursdays because classes. So I check their schedule, okay 6 shifts I have to try to move. I check their requested schedule, they requested EVERY SINGLE Tuesday and Thursday.

I just had Adam Lambert's "Whaddya Want From Me" just echoing in my head.

Like really. You ask for it, then don't want it.

#hospitalstories #hospital #cna jobs #cnaproblems #cna #staffing #shenanigans #omgwhydothistome

[my-life-as-a-hospital-staffer]

2/6/20

Something a bit more serious. There's a lack of clearly defined communication sometimes and it ends up resulting in hurt feelings. Every month me, the staffer, and the unit managers get together and compare the staffing numbers for understaffed and overstaffed days and try to even it out. This meeting has never been delegated as "belonging" to anyone and was an experiment between me and my direct boss.

Today was that day and I only had 3 days to get everything together and I even came in an hour and a half early to try and get it done- I'm hourly, I'm not paid to take it and work from home like they are.

One manager comes in and bluntly says "You don't have it done?" No, I don't. I also booked the conference room for an hour and a half which was more than enough time. It would have taken a quick 10 minutes to finish, and instead I was berated and told to reschedule for Monday.

The manager calls me about 6 hours later and says they want to talk about the meeting. I think that maybe they're about to apologize for the way they cam across.

Nope. Instead I get a lecture on how it's *my* meeting and I am dropping the ball and they have EXPECTATIONS. I need to "own" this meeting and take responsibility. This is not my direct manager by the way.

I'll be honest, I was crying halfway through the lecture. It's been as really bad week and lots of "why don't you have enough staff" for our record high of 10 SITTER needs on 4 units and having to chase down 16 employees for schedules they did not submit on time and do triple the documentation for the unit I do schedules for (no one else does the amount of documentation I do in order to not cause Union Grievances). As a side note, our hospital is 116 beds. It's small but not miniscule.

I found out today during that phone call that my husband had to leave town for a week for work and the day before I watched a lady casually victim blame assault victims for their situations (this being a personal issue for me). I had 4 hours of sleep for that morning. I wasn't in a very great mental state to take a verbal beating like I usually can without crying.

We are human. We have feelings and we deserve to be treated with consideration. It didn't help that I had accidentally stepped in that manager's toes twice this week. I even was the one who went to them about one situation because I wasn't sure I handled it right. Turns out I didn't.

FYI as a staffer, you aren't HR but boy everyone else thinks you are. Like the less strict version or something where it won't get noted on a record somewhere you're calling out but you're not actually sick. So they try to get around their managers by coming to you, and if the manager hasn't said "hey watch out for this" you wouldn't know.

Please be kind. It costs you nothing to be considerate. Especially when that person has expressed concerns before but no one's stepping up to help resolve.

#hospitalstories #hospital #staffing solutions #staffing #shenanigans #meetinghell #meetings #bekind

[my-life-as-a-hospital-staffer]

2/5/20

Today we had a family refuse hospice care for a family member in a different hospital, demand the family member instead go to a hospice center, the center refused because the patient also refused all types of care, packed her up in an ambulance and dumped her on us to pass away. Just fyi it's an EMTALA issue at that point.

We then had another patient pass away also in comfort care (code for actively dying) but the RN didn't document correctly and it ended up looking like the patient passed away due to morphine overdose instead of their underlying issues. DNV is here in a week. That's kind of like the Hospital inspection cops. Oh joy.

#hospitalstories #hospital #RN #CNA #shenanigans #hospice #nursestories

[my-life-as-a-hospital-staffer]

1/31/20

We finally found a placement home for a patient who's been with us for several weeks (dumping happens). We had transport ready, an extra CNA staffed to go with them and off they went. They get there to find out he's now rejected because the home didn't take report on time and now is refusing a patient with a condition that's manageable (because they have that condition).

What a waste of time and resources. Now we have to call in a second CNA to sit with the patient for the rest of the day and night, spent money on a BLS transport and have to re-admit the patient to the hospital after being discharged.

#hospital #hospitalstories #storytime #RN #CNA #shenanigans

[my-life-as-a-hospital-staffer]

1/30/20

Someone up on 3rd floor was too embarrassed to admit he spilled his urinal and blamed it in the previous occupant and demanded to know what they had. Sent everyone into a tizzy over a missed spill that got past an RN, CNA and Housekeeping. He didn't admit to it until after the Nursing Supervisor had Risk on the phone to find out what we could say.

#hospital #hospitalstories #storytime #RN #CNA #shenanigans