Reply With QuoteYes, it is nice that someone is looking into the quality of nurses' lives on the job. It would also be nice if someone would look into, what I see as, the phenomenal increase in demands on nurses' off time. I left a "magnet" hospital pretty much because the increase in demands that staff nurses sit on committees, show up for absolutely ridiculous numbers of mandatory inservices (I counted 14 between mid-October and the end of December the last year I was there), requests that nurses put together educational posters to hang in the halls, prepare inservices for colleagues, study and sit for certification exams, all for absolutely NO reimbursement of any kind, and lastly expectations that we would access our hospital email from home on days off to make sure we knew when the next, last minute mandatory inservice was scheduled, sent me right out the door. In addition, as far as the quality of life on the floors I have known of nurses who have had their time cards altered with the explanation that the facility "doesn't pay overtime", demands that nurses punch out for a half hour break whether or not they are able to take a break, most recently an expectation of a hospital where I started a travel assignment that we do about 2 or more hours of self-learning packets at home, again without being paid. The way nurses are treated is just outrageous, yet it goes on and on and on. In 25 years I've heard a lot of talk from hospital administrators about their "commitment" to their nurses and it has been just that:talk. I've seen no improvements at all. If anything things are worse than ever. That's why I do agency work. I do my shifts and then I leave. End of story.
