Is the Current Nurse Manager Role Attractive to Millennials and Gen Xers?

Image by TeroVesalainen from Pixabay

A perennially challenging role.

I’ve always found the role of nurse manager to be the most difficult one in health care. Crushed between staff nurses begging for enough resources to do the job and administrators pressing for cost containment, nurse managers often find it hard to make any progress at all.

This job comes with 24-hour responsibility, often (incredibly) for more than one unit. This can mean taking responsibility for, say, 50 patients, and 80 or more staff. Just managing payroll for so many people (as many managers still have to do) can take half the pay period! And all this for the princely salary of . . . less than what many of their senior staff nurses are making.

Redesigning the nurse manager role includes greater role flexibility.

Those of us who’ve been in nursing for decades simply accepted that, if you wanted to move up the nursing career ladder, you would have to accept all of the above. Younger generations of nurses, though, see things differently. […]

2019-03-15T10:09:41-04:00March 13th, 2019|Nursing, nursing career|0 Comments
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Case of Nurse Charged with Homicide for Medication Error Raises Concerns

Every nurse’s nightmare.

On February 1, Radonda Leanne Vaught, a former nurse at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, was indicted and arrested for impaired adult abuse and reckless homicide. She is accused of inadvertently administering the wrong medication and causing a patient’s death in an incident in late 2017.

This is every nurse’s nightmare.

According to the CMS report from its investigation, Vaught administered IV vecuronium (a neuromuscular blocking agent that causes paralysis and is often used during surgery) instead of IV Versed (a sedating agent) to an anxious patient undergoing a diagnostic scan. The patient stopped breathing, suffered brain damage, and subsequently died. Vaught was charged with recklessness because she overrode the automated medication dispensing system and didn’t follow standard procedures in properly checking the drug name or in monitoring the patient after administering the medication.

What the CMS report says.

The CMS report, which includes interviews with Vaught as well as witnesses and safety officers at the hospital, notes the following information about Vaught’s actions while she was in the medication system searching for the medication:

“[Vaught]. . . was talking to [an] Orientee while he/she was searching the ADC for the Versed and had typed in the first 2 letters of Versed which are VE and […]

2019-03-01T14:14:51-05:00February 12th, 2019|Nursing, nursing career|10 Comments
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Being a Bully and Being Bullied

‘Didn’t you learn that in school?’

Have you ever worked with a nasty colleague who knew everything? A nurse that the patients loved and showered with thank you cards and notes but was despised by coworkers? Unfortunately, I knew that person all too well. That bully nurse was me. It’s been nearly ten years since I received a wake-up call from another nurse and my then health care organization, making clear that I needed to change or risk heading further down a destructive path.

A few years into my nursing career—I can now admit—I thought I knew everything; the operative word here is thought. ‘Mary,’ a good colleague and still a friend today, would tell me, “I like you. I just can’t stand working with you.”

A kind person, Mary would never elaborate on my faults. In hindsight, it’s obvious to me what Mary was referring to. I could smell the blood of weaker individuals in the clinical setting and I was deliberately inconsiderate. I never raised my voice, but could be curt and make snide remarks: “Why are you bothering me now?” “Didn’t you learn that in school?”

None of the people I bullied stood up to me, so I continued. I really don’t fully understand it today. Was I power hungry? Possibly. Whatever the case, this way […]

2019-01-30T14:36:02-05:00January 30th, 2019|Nursing, nursing career|1 Comment
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Delegating: A Crucial, Sometimes Tricky Nursing Skill

Knowing where you fit in with the team.

Ralph Hogaboom / Flickr

As a new nurse I was entranced with my role. Throughout my schooling, I had worked closely with nurses and nursing instructors I admired, but out in the real world I was only beginning to understand how I fit in with the rest of the team. From those early years, I vividly remember two separate run-ins I had with nurse aides. I was so frustrated that they didn’t simply follow my instructions! Looking back, I think these disagreements were mostly about experienced workers “testing” me and our working relationship.

Delegation is not simple.

In “Delegating as a New Nurse” (free until January 10) in this month’s AJN, Amanda Anderson offers a wealth of practical information to help new and not-so-new nurses learn the art of delegation. I could have used her guidance back then. As she notes, delegation is not a “simple” task:

“It requires an appreciation of nuance and insight, both of which new graduates may lack. Delegation often requires skills that aren’t taught in nursing school and are difficult for preceptors to teach in the clinical setting.”

[…]

2018-12-26T10:34:48-05:00December 26th, 2018|nursing career, nursing roles|1 Comment
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Breaking onto Boards: Tips for Nurses

Photo by Steve Debenport / Istock.com.

A 2014 survey by the American Hospital Association found that nurses—the largest group of health care professionals—held just 5% of hospital board seats (by comparison, physicians held 20%). It goes without saying that health care organizations stand to gain valuable insight and leadership by including more nurses in the boardroom. But as discussed by Blima Marcus in this month’s Professional Development column, nurses face many barriers to getting a seat at the table. These include:

  • the perception of nurses as “background” care providers rather than leaders
  • the tendency of board members and executives to nominate candidates who they are already familiar with and who work in a similar field
  • lacking the knowledge and skills needed to serve on a board (i.e., leadership and organizational skills)
  • not being a part of the socioeconomic class often associated with board membership—often, members are asked to make donations to their organizations

Overcoming the barriers

While these barriers may seem daunting, Marcus notes that there are practical actions nurses can take to put […]

2018-12-18T10:03:55-05:00December 18th, 2018|Nursing, nursing career|0 Comments
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Views expressed on the blog are solely those of the authors or persons quoted. They do not necessarily reflect AJN’s views or those of Wolters Kluwer Health/Lippincott Williams and Wilkins.
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