So I think I hate my life right now, all this hormone crap sucks I want to cry then laugh then cry some more and then I just want to freaking kill someone. Work is a joke lately. So what happens when you have anyone licensed in the medical field LPN or RN and you catch them point blank fraudulently charting their assessments, over and over and over? I am talking fresh surgery patients lung sounds, bowel sounds and circulation here. So my manager tells me to write her up so I have three times. I care for two reasons, first and foremost the patient. These patients come in willingly or not to have surgery, to be treated by professionals to expect the best care they could possibly hope to have. These are people's lives this is their limbs and bowels and lungs that matter. I mean that is why there is nurses right? We are supposed to be there for the patient to monitor them to make sure that everything is going good. There are exceptions where the unexpected happen and unfortunately some people are to sick that no matter how well they are taken care of they pass or have life changing events. Secondly since I am the RN and she is the LPN it is not only her license that she is jeopardizing by charting that she has done her assessments when she doesn't do them all night. Per her patients, because since my license is involved here and the patients life and well being I now ask all her patients specifically if she has done her assessment on them, she just comes in the room introduces herself and gives them their pills. That's it. No listening with her stethoscope, no checking their limbs or stomach that they just had surgery on. And what bothers me is that she has been a nurse for more than 20 years. Now don't take this as I am saying that all LPNs are this way. I work with some excellent LPNs, just not this one. I generally believe that it doesn't matter RN or LPN it just so happens that in this case the woman I have a problem with is an LPN. If it was an RN doing the same thing I would care just as much for the patients sake, but I tend to not follow behind the other Rn's and ask all their patients about their care since you can generally tell when someone is not doing their work, for example;
1) They start their assessment's after you, you start at 8pm they start at 9pm but they are done by 930pm. You are not done till 11pm.
2) The patient has to put their call light on three times before they go in the room to give them the pain medication that they have asked for already three times.
3) They disappear for hours from the floor and when you assist their patients to the bathroom or with a drink of water you notice that their dressing is completely saturated and falling off.
4) You know that intake and output totals are done in the morning around 5am but at 1am the patient with the foley says he really needs to pee but his "nurse' told him to just let it go since he has a foley. Upon assessment he is found to have a kinked sat upon foley, post unkinking and movement of the catheter the bag fills up like it is catching the freakin Niagara Falls of Westbranch.
Now I work in a union hospital. So the correct chain of command or whatever paper trail they tell you to follow needs to be done, so like I said I have written her up the three times that this has happened, and keep in mind I have only worked with her three times. She calls off all the other times she is supposed to work, damn FMLA that is another post at another time. So what does my fine union say? Well the patients statement is null and void if they had received any narcotics. Okay it is a surgical floor, who the hell doesn't get narcotics after surgery? So she gets to keep on not doing her assessments and I get to keep on doing double my work to follow behind and do the assessments. I am wondering if maybe I should report her directly to the state? But per my union that is not my part of the paper trail. Funny I have read so many articles in my nurses journals about nurses loosing their licenses for much less that falsely documenting. So why is my union protecting her? Who knows, all I know is I think she needs to be reported to the state. She should not be practicing nursing, well she doesn't do that either, she shouldn't get to pretend to do her job. I shouldn't have to do double mine and only get paid my salary and not hers as well.
At 12:38 AM, 
At 12:40 AM,
Thanks.. I needed that. You just sounded like me. Earlier tonight I typed my resignation letter. It would appear that we have a similar work environment. And when we try in the name of "Integrity" to bring it to the attention of our superiors, we just get shot down. Last weekend I worked with another nurse who disappeared from the unit for a hour and a half. One of the other nurse's said" she is on break"....... "She really went shopping down at Kohl's". She never clocked out, she took the keys to her med cart with her, and her lunch break was only suppose to be 30 minutes long. While she was off the unit and out of the building, her nursing aides had to come to me for decisions concerning her patients, as well as family members of her patients. She had several patients that needed pain medications and one that was having labored breathing. I had 16 patients of my own that I was responsible for. The other nurse on our unit ( 3 of us total) kept coming in my patient's room while I was doing treatments and informing me that she was taking yet another smoke break. So not only did I have my own work on my hall to get done, I had nursing aides and family members for the other two nurse's piling in on top of me.
The real jacked up part of it all is that I have caught those other two nurse's sitting at the nurse's station most of the rest of the time when they aren't already off the unit. There is no way in hell that they can be passing medications or doing treatments. Then of course comes charting and documenting..... Their documentation is fiction all the way!!! I get really bothered by the piss poor care that some of the patients receive due to the fact that the patients never see their nurse's but once in a 12 hour shift. And then, those are the nurse's that get my weekend shifts that I put in for almost a year ago. So, I will be leaving my position in order to go back to school. I'll be moving up in the nursing world while they just keep screwing off. I just want to scream about the time one of my patient's or their family members grabs me and gives me a big hug and says "Thank you for the great care you are giving my Mother."
Thanks.. I needed that. You just sounded like me. Earlier tonight I typed my resignation letter. It would appear that we have a similar work environment. And when we try in the name of "Integrity" to bring it to the attention of our superiors, we just get shot down. Last weekend I worked with another nurse who disappeared from the unit for a hour and a half. One of the other nurse's said" she is on break"....... "She really went shopping down at Kohl's". She never clocked out, she took the keys to her med cart with her, and her lunch break was only suppose to be 30 minutes long. While she was off the unit and out of the building, her nursing aides had to come to me for decisions concerning her patients, as well as family members of her patients. She had several patients that needed pain medications and one that was having labored breathing. I had 16 patients of my own that I was responsible for. The other nurse on our unit ( 3 of us total) kept coming in my patient's room while I was doing treatments and informing me that she was taking yet another smoke break. So not only did I have my own work on my hall to get done, I had nursing aides and family members for the other two nurse's piling in on top of me.
The real jacked up part of it all is that I have caught those other two nurse's sitting at the nurse's station most of the rest of the time when they aren't already off the unit. There is no way in hell that they can be passing medications or doing treatments. Then of course comes charting and documenting..... Their documentation is fiction all the way!!! I get really bothered by the piss poor care that some of the patients receive due to the fact that the patients never see their nurse's but once in a 12 hour shift. And then, those are the nurse's that get my weekend shifts that I put in for almost a year ago. So, I will be leaving my position in order to go back to school. I'll be moving up in the nursing world while they just keep screwing off. I just want to scream about the time one of my patient's or their family members grabs me and gives me a big hug and says "Thank you for the great care you are giving my Mother."