Nursing Station: The Showdown

I have the dubious misfortune of being the charge nurse tonight.

Even being the world's biggest asshole has not prevented us from being shafted in terms of staffing and admits. Nursing office complains that they have had three pages of call-ins for this weekend (some sort of flu), they have pulled one of my nurses to float to another floor, leaving us short. Plus, we have gotten more than the lion's share of admits for our floor...most of the bullshit admits that can go to other floors.

To make the whole charging experience even more rewarding, four people have called in for day shift.

I tell you, charging is simply not worth the extra $2 an hour.

An almost full floor with half isolation patients. Only 5 nurses on days to cover (they usually get 7), and no telemetry techs. Nursing supervisor tells me they have no nurses to float, so at 5am, I get to call everyone who is not scheduled and try to persuade them to come in on their day off and work.

From personal experience, I know how easy it is to say no at 5am. But I am used to being told no, so it really won't bother me any. Besides, it's not my shift. (See, I am an asshole!)

So, when the day crowd rolls in, and I get to tell them that they have to work short this morning because there is no one in the float pool, and none of their coworkers want to come in and help out, they will inevitably proceed to bite my head off because as the charge nurse, I am supposed to magically pull extra staffing out of my ass.

The only thing that makes this remotely rewarding is that I get to call the Bosshole and wake him up at 5am on a Saturday morning, and tell him that we need him to come in and work because we have no staff.

I don't even need the $2 more an hour to do that. That is something I would do for free.