New Icu Rn Feels Bullied.....

[jackar]

Hi All:

I Need Some Sort Of Comfort. I Am A Fairly New Icu Nurse. I Have Been With A Big Magnet Hospital In Icu For 8 Months And Feel Like I Am Under A Microscope And Being Unfairly Treated. In The Beginning, The Nurses That Had Been There For Ever (> 5yrs) Were Rude During Report. Of Course I Spoke To Management And A Big Stink Was Made About The Seasoned Rn's Making The Newer Rn's Feel Comfortable. I Feel Like I Shot Myself In The Foot Early On.. My Department Is Always Saying What A Team They Are (bs)!!! I Recently Got My 6 Month Review (a Little Late). I Was On Target For Everything, But Was Told They Wanted To "buddy" Me Up With Some One Because Some Of The Charges Noticed That I Seemed Frazzled At Night!! ( Well My Patients Are Critically Ill And I Don't Want To Miss Anything - So Yes I Am Frazzled At Times) I Don't Feel I Need A Buddy. So I Was Buddied Up With Someone And I Didn't Even Ask For Help From Them. The Next Morning Management Wanted To Chat About My Night. We Sat Down In One Of The Manager's Office And She Said So Tell Me What You Did From 1900 On. Well, I Had Been Up For Freaking 24 Hrs (1st Night On Of Three) & I Was Tired. I Leave My Patient Behind Once I Walk Out Of The Unit. I Told Her My Priority Is To Ensure The Patient Doesn't Die!! She Got Pissed That I Said That And Said, I Don't Think Your Understanding Me... Blah, Blah, Blah.

Anyway, I Am Just Trying To Hang In There For 5 More Months (so I Can Have At Least A Year Under My Belt And Move On) I Hope I Can Hang On As I Hate It!!!!!

Any Advice.....

[AmandaWIRN]

I would just get out of there- sounds like a toxic environment. I have found that "magnet" status means nothing when it comes to nurse's satisfaction with their jobs.... it's just a title.

[jackar]

Thanks

[Ricu]

Hi Jack,

My knee-jerk reaction is to agree with Amanda that it seems as though you're in a toxic environment. Secondly, I agree that "Magnet" doesn't mean much in terms of facilitative nursing. That said, how are you doing right now? Instinct tells me that you will at some point, extract the "pearls" from your current experience and down the road, be better for it. In the future, this experience will likely help you to be a good preceptor yourself. I'm sure you're doing a great job but are having a hard time seeing the positives. Your mentor/preceptor should be helping you to see this but if that isn't happening, try to do it on your own. For now, try to answer the famous albeit, reworded Dear Abby question, "Are you better off with or without this current situation?" Only you know. If you choose to leave, be sure to have an exit interview and focus on the positive when evaluating this facility, it will work to your benefit. If you choose to stay, try to not harden yourself and work to extend a compassionate hand to newbies.

R

[bleucloud]

It sounds like you are definitely in a toxic environment. The unfortunate part about some nursing units is they forget that not everyone know EVERYTHING and the staff nurses working there don't either. I am on a step down unit, in which most of my patients should still be 1:1 but they aren't. They tell us the same thing they tell the girls in the unit

"If you are comfortable and not overwhelmed at any point in your first year as an ICU RN, then you are not a safe nurse."Therefore you should be frazzled!!!!

[marita]

My situation is different. I work for an aged care facility. I work every second weekend including the Friday and the Monday (4 days per fortnigth). There is a EEN who works full time. We have a resident who needs pain patches every three days. On this particular day, the EEN was unable to get the pain patch from the chemist for our resident, the doctor had not sent script to the chemist. The resident was fine all day. It was Saturday and I worked from 7am and finished really late 7 at night. Went home and was very tired. Another EEN who works from 2pm till 10.30 pm. called me and said that the resident was crying and in pain and we didnt have the patch to apply on her. I made the decision to borrow the same patch the same strength from another resident, with the idea of replacing it the next day when she got hers. I said to the EEN at work to borrow the patch and apply it on the resident. She did so, but I got in terrible trouble the next day and the morning EEN said to be treated it as and incident/accident. She further said that because of me the other EEN could loose her practice licence. I said if you were in my position what would you have done? she said ring the hospital. I said as far as I know I did the right thing by my patient, she was in agony, legally probably i made a mistake for asking the other EEN to apply the pain patch. Please can you coment on this. thank you

[Ricu]

Originally Posted by marita

My situation is different. I work for an aged care facility. I work every second weekend including the Friday and the Monday (4 days per fortnigth). There is a EEN who works full time. We have a resident who needs pain patches every three days. On this particular day, the EEN was unable to get the pain patch from the chemist for our resident, the doctor had not sent script to the chemist. The resident was fine all day. It was Saturday and I worked from 7am and finished really late 7 at night. Went home and was very tired. Another EEN who works from 2pm till 10.30 pm. called me and said that the resident was crying and in pain and we didnt have the patch to apply on her. I made the decision to borrow the same patch the same strength from another resident, with the idea of replacing it the next day when she got hers. I said to the EEN at work to borrow the patch and apply it on the resident. She did so, but I got in terrible trouble the next day and the morning EEN said to be treated it as and incident/accident. She further said that because of me the other EEN could loose her practice licence. I said if you were in my position what would you have done? she said ring the hospital. I said as far as I know I did the right thing by my patient, she was in agony, legally probably i made a mistake for asking the other EEN to apply the pain patch. Please can you coment on this. thank you

Hi Marita,

It's amazing how complex medical practice gets. First of all, to my knowledge, you cannot be held accountable for a medication "error" committed by another licensed professional even if it's on your recommendation. On the other hand, you may "feel" responsible because she did as you suggested by correctly treating the patient who was in pain and got into trouble. On the matter of administering medication to one patient that was dispensed to another, the institutional policy will dictate but so long as the strength of the patch was correct and the other patient wasn't deprived of a dose that was due, I believe that no med error was committed. The fortunate or unfortunate, part of this issue is that it was all easily preventable. It doesn't sound like the pain patch was a new medication for this patient however, if a new prescription was needed, it was a foreseeable thing and should've been addressed long before the weekend. A supply would've then have been on hand and this never would've happened. Perhaps the administration can view this occurrance as a learning opportunity and look more closely at prevention rather than penalizing you and your colleague who in my opinion, exercised sound judgement under the circumstances and took care of the immediate needs of the patient.

Good luck,

R

[LivingDeadNurse]

Originally Posted by jackar

Hi All:

I Need Some Sort Of Comfort. I Am A Fairly New Icu Nurse. I Have Been With A Big Magnet Hospital In Icu For 8 Months And Feel Like I Am Under A Microscope And Being Unfairly Treated. In The Beginning, The Nurses That Had Been There For Ever (> 5yrs) Were Rude During Report. Of Course I Spoke To Management And A Big Stink Was Made About The Seasoned Rn's Making The Newer Rn's Feel Comfortable. I Feel Like I Shot Myself In The Foot Early On.. My Department Is Always Saying What A Team They Are (bs)!!! I Recently Got My 6 Month Review (a Little Late). I Was On Target For Everything, But Was Told They Wanted To "buddy" Me Up With Some One Because Some Of The Charges Noticed That I Seemed Frazzled At Night!! ( Well My Patients Are Critically Ill And I Don't Want To Miss Anything - So Yes I Am Frazzled At Times) I Don't Feel I Need A Buddy. So I Was Buddied Up With Someone And I Didn't Even Ask For Help From Them. The Next Morning Management Wanted To Chat About My Night. We Sat Down In One Of The Manager's Office And She Said So Tell Me What You Did From 1900 On. Well, I Had Been Up For Freaking 24 Hrs (1st Night On Of Three) & I Was Tired. I Leave My Patient Behind Once I Walk Out Of The Unit. I Told Her My Priority Is To Ensure The Patient Doesn't Die!! She Got Pissed That I Said That And Said, I Don't Think Your Understanding Me... Blah, Blah, Blah.

Anyway, I Am Just Trying To Hang In There For 5 More Months (so I Can Have At Least A Year Under My Belt And Move On) I Hope I Can Hang On As I Hate It!!!!!

Any Advice.....

Frazzled? what nurse can not say that they have been frazzled. i have been at my job for 2yrs and still have nite that get me frazzled. lol Quiting is totally up to you but let me give u a sample that happened to me. i started at a training hospital. they had a long orientation program. Unfortunately they didn't have a specific mentor for me. i had a different RN each time i worked which i didn't realise how that wasn't a good thing. So when i came off orientation i was trying to compile all of my training. i had an RN on my 2nd day by myself to chew me out because i was getting behind and i was acting frazzled. i had a few situations that i didn't encounter in my training. I kept asking for help and asking questions. She pretty much made me feel stupid. i didn't think i was doing that bad. This was my first job as a nurse. i knew i wasn't going to be perfect. But because my RN was so cruel i couldn't get passed that. I would get even more stressed when i would have her as my RN. She cont. to make it difficult for me. SO i quit. i was afraid to tell on her because i felt they would consider me a whiney nurse. I tried to make it my 1st year. I was so miserable i dreaded waking up and going to work for fear i would get her again. I guess i wasn't strong enough to let it go.
i found a job a month later that didn't care about my experience or how long i stayed at my last job. I had a great RN that let me ask my questions. Course she joked with me that she never met anyone that had so many questions. If your not comfortable with your job it will effect your job. And like you said your Pt. is your number one priority. You don't have tell your next job why u left. It could be pay,experience or heck like i told my new job its closer to home and i don't have to travel as far. Just remember to take this job as a learning experience on how to train your new nurses when you become a season nurse. i know i do. hope that helps

[marita]

Dear R,

Thank you very much for your coment it makes me feel a little better. The resident we borrowed the patch from had 3 boxes of the drug. There is a big problem with this patches. I will have to write letters to the doctors to ensure that the scripts are sent to the chemist on time. This happen all the time. Thank you again. Marita

[Ricu]

Originally Posted by marita

Dear R,

Thank you very much for your coment it makes me feel a little better. The resident we borrowed the patch from had 3 boxes of the drug. There is a big problem with this patches. I will have to write letters to the doctors to ensure that the scripts are sent to the chemist on time. This happen all the time. Thank you again. Marita

Hi again,

It sounds like you're on the way to a solution. I've never worked LTC so I'm not really familiar with the practice of prescription renewals but it seems like a headache.

R