Are you required to do mandatory overtime at your hospital? In Ohio, lawmakers are trying to ban mandatory overtime as a condition of employment. Nurses are very scared that if they say “no” to mandatory overtime that they will be fired. Due to the nursing shortage, hospitals feel they have no choice but to have nurses work longer hours to cover more shifts. But, unfortunately, this creates a danger to the patients and to those who care for them because the nurses will be exhausted. … [Read more...]
When Helping Can Hurt You
As nurses, while we really want to help our patients, we sometimes find that our being helpful can get us into trouble. As you know, we are required to follow tons of rules. We have to watch our professional boundaries to make sure we are not overstepping. For example, if you work at an assisted living facility where one of your patients needs help getting groceries and you agree to get the items for the patient. This is crossing the line. You are there to provide nursing care and not … [Read more...]
Top Ten Things To Never Do In Nursing
You’ve heard of the “never” events where the government will not pay for certain things that happen in a hospital that shouldn’t have happened. This list includes things such as decubitus ulcers (stage III and IV), vascular catheter associated infection, catheter associated urinary tract infections, administration of incompatible blood, falls, air embolism and foreign object intentionally retained after surgery. I decided to come up with my own NEVER-DO list in nursing. NEVER pre-chart … [Read more...]
Anything You Say Can And Will Be Used Against You
There probably is no one in the country who has not heard the phrase “Anything you say can and will be used against you.” I’ve been familiar with that saying seemingly forever. I always thought that referred only to criminal matters but apparently it now applies to nursing as well. I have had cases where a nurse jested with an off the cuff remark about something at work. Whether or not it was made as humor, employers seem to be taking these quips seriously resulting in the nurses being … [Read more...]
Nurses With Substance Abuse Problems
Recently, an article in The Atlanta Journal Constitution detailed how the Georgia Board of Nursing secretly handles more than half of its disciplinary cases. What I gather from the article is that nurses who are put into a monitoring program, as long as they are compliant, will have not have discipline against their license. The article pointed out that in 2017, the Board has 333 new disciplinary orders. Of that number, 54% were private with just under half of that group being alcohol or … [Read more...]
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