Sep 132012
A few weeks ago I wrote about the nurse that was being sued by a CEO for alleged defamatory Facebook comments made during an industrial action.
I mentioned that there is often (justified or not) this deep credibility and confidence chasm between hospital executive and their staff.
But is that a fair comment? Perhaps not.
Lets take a poll and see what you all think about your own hospital executive/managements performance.
Choose the statement below that most closely aligns with your own feelings on this.
Once you have voted you can check to see the results.
I feel very lucky to be where I am, especially looking at the poll. I work at a major academic medical center in the USA, and I know exactly who the big wigs are, and can even recognize them when I see them in the halls, which is frequently. I don’t know if it’s because we are a magnet hospital, so emphasis is placed on nursing excellence and nursing influence in the hospital, or if it’s just because we have a quality leadership team, but I feel like they know what’s going on and are working to fix the problems that are identified.
At my last job, I only knew who the head folks were because they were the ones in the suits that we all tidied up ahead of, and we all felt like they had no clue and were just out to protect the bottom line.
As a paramedic in a regional city, the local hospital’s management are so out of touch it’s scary.
Coming from a metro station previously, the archaic ways up here are quite disturbing, ranging from the staffing levels, to what is expected of the ED staff (as far as administration tasks during shifts etc).
Not to mention the “us vs them” attitude of some of the middle management towards ambos – the way some of our staff are spoken to is like the stretcher bearers of the 1970′s being told off by the Matron.
for those of us in smaller country hospitals under the umbrella of a larger area health service this is a difficult question to answer……
my own hospital’s management are trying their best under difficult circumstances. they value the work the floor staff do and recognise the difficulties and problems specific to our dept’s, our area and our community.
the area management (based in the larger referral hospitals) on the other hand are not particularly interested in our specific service, are not often interested in genuine consultation (which means active listening) and have no idea of the nuances specific to our work place (but that doesn’t necessarily make them bad people, just a different focus).
my personal response to this has been GET INVOLVED! make myself known to the bigger players. be and advocate for the smaller and less represented sites. I’ve joined committees, been elected to the area’s Clinical Council and attend as many meetings that are relevant as possible.
……and in a small way that has worked. at least i feel as though I’ve given my best to being an advocate not just for patients but for services as well. I’m not comfortable with whinging if i haven’t tried my best to be part of the change id like to see.
Thanks Angie, excellent comment.
Wow, I am sitting here drafting a post on the very things you are talking about. Getting active instead of getting complaining is very important.
Would you care to share more of your experiences aroun this? Email me.
Totally agree! Get in there and be proactive. Whinging about the problems will not make them go away.
Our small country hospital is struggling. Many staff complain about management but I have found them excellent to deal with. They are trying to improve our health service but with the constraints placed from above, it is nigh on impossible. I hear a lot of complaints from other staff, usually ones who have never worked anywhere else, and yet when you ask what their specific issue with management is, they have no answer.
Everyone is burned out and tired because our staffing levels suck, and everyone’s doing loads of overtime. Our patient load is high also (1 to 7 or 8 on a day shift). Management have been recruiting for ages, but we cannot GET staff to these country areas, and most jobs are part-time or contracts. We constantly have agency staff, which obviously costs the health service time and money in orientation, agency fees etc. Other staff get irritated because they are constantly orientating these agency staff. But what do you do? Those in the ivory tower don’t care. They simply send us a ridiculous “reasonable workload tool” to observe our patient numbers over a 6-month period. We feed our data into this stupid thing every shift, and that tells somebody down in an office in Sydney how many staff we should have! W-T-F? It says nothing about how our midwife is off the floor attending a birth, so the other 2 on duty have to also care for her patients. Or night duty where our midwife has only an EN rostered with her. It says nothing about the two HDU beds with very sick people (who really need 1 to 1 care) awaiting transfer to a full-to-overflowing referral hospital who cannot take them as they have no beds. It says nothing of the 2 palliative care rooms who really need our time and attention for the family as well. The numbers we type in are MEANINGLESS, and yet this is how they decide what number of staff is appropriate. Certainly no 1 to 4 out here, that’s for sure!
Our local management do their best, but with this sort of constraint, what can they do?
Perhaps as I was a manager in my pre-nursing life I have a different perspective, I’m not sure.