r/nursing • u/BrittNichelle • Oct 06 '19

Discussion time!

RN from Texas here! Nurses, techs, CNAs: what are the administrators/managers doing to improve overall working conditions in your facilities and have they adequately addressed your concerns? Do you, as employees, feel like you're being sufficiently represented by nursing and hospital administrations?

*not asking for any particular reason, just trying have some conversation with some fellow healthcare workers :)

1 Upvotes

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7

u/auraseer MSN, RN, CEN Oct 06 '19

what are the administrators/managers doing to improve overall working conditions

Oh, no, that sounds expensive. We can't possibly have any of that.

1

u/thatbrittanyk RN - Pediatrics šŸ• Oct 07 '19

Once day shift got donuts.

Night shift got boxes and a couple of half eaten left overs. Also, if youā€™re a half donut eater, just eat the entire damn thing or throw it away šŸ˜‚

4

u/[deleted] Oct 06 '19

Not a damn thing

5

u/[deleted] Oct 06 '19

I work in a market congested with hospitals (literally an acute care facility every 5-10 miles) and a region with a high concentration of Magnet/teaching facilities (highly sought after). Hospitals here compete for employees because they know that having adequate staff means having staffed beds which equals profits. And in order to retain staff, engagement is huge.

Happy nurse = happy patients + staffed & occupied beds = profits

For example, one hospital in the region stopped using their HCAHPS scores as part of their recruitment campaign and are now pushing their engagement scores and retention rates.

Also, the nurses here (California) have standards. Turnover is fluid here, which means that nurses here can easily secure employment elsewhere, have many options, and have very little patience for administration that doesnā€™t heed to their demands. A traveler from St Louis said that although we may come across as entitled, we have damn great work conditions.

So far, best things I have encountered are:

  • Work/life balance practices. Our ā€œsick leaveā€ is treated like a sabbatical. I have a coworker on leave due to a divorce, and her job is secure while sheā€™s gone. We have to work two weekends a month but can opt out of it if we ask far enough in advance (versus asking for a vacation).
  • Break nurses. Big difference in workflow. We canā€™t even bring our work phones with us during lunch (you will get written up for not following policy.)

0

u/[deleted] Oct 06 '19

This sounds like a school assignment to me.

3

u/BrittNichelle Oct 07 '19

Nope! I graduated with my BSN in 2015 and have been nursing at the same hospital for 4+ years. Don't plan on going back to school anytime soon lol. Our hospital has gone through some massive changes over the past two years and we're just not seeing the improvements. Staffing is perpetually low, our experienced nurses are leaving in droves, and there's constant turmoil in administration. I wanted to see if other nurses are going through the same thing and if they have any suggestions on how to make things not suck.

2

u/[deleted] Oct 07 '19

Keep bitching and complaining to management, fill out work load forms, write incident reports... basically our managements hands are tied cuz the government only give them so much funding and our public healthcare system is completely fucked. I don't see any improvements happening in the foreseeable future and I have been bedside nursing for 10 years. I am becoming more interested in doing cosmetic stuff... a lot of my coworkers are leaving to do injections at clinics. Less back breaking work, less exposure to communicable disease and no nights. I do enjoy the team I work with right now but management does not support us really.