Money Trap

It didn't seem possible, but things have gotten worse at work. Our nurse's aide fell and broke his arm while trying to keep a patient from falling. The patient is fine, but our aide will be gone for six to eight weeks. If his contract is like ours, he will get full pay while he recovers.

The problem we are having is that management will not replace him. Other aides have asked to work for him; it is not a problem to find a temporary replacement, but they won't replace him. For the last quarter, we are nine million dollars over budget.

In the meantime, the nurses are at the breaking point. Nurses are working a couple of hours extra on overtime a day to catch up with the charting. The new computer charting and scanning devices are a royal pain and even the I.T. people are struggling to make them work.

Plus, now that the unit secretaries aren't entering orders for us, they keep wandering off. Answering the phone, which I really hate to do, takes up a ridiculous amount of my time. What time I have left is spent answering call lights and cleaning up whatever bodily fluids or solids I come across. Oh, and apologizing is time consuming as well. Every time I hear that someone is unhappy, whether it is a patient or a nurse, I have to listen to them vent and then apologize.

Many of the nurses work two jobs, so I have been asking them about their other jobs to see if I might be happier elsewhere. All of the nurses like their other jobs better, but they work here because of the money and benefits. I think I know why we are over budget. No other hospital even comes close to paying what we are paid.

The next best paying hospital in the area is U.C.L.A., but their base pay for me would be about eight dollars less an hour. That is sixteen thousand dollars less a year. Plus, nurses have to pay nine dollars a day to park and their health insurance and care isn't free like ours. They do have support staff, though. They pay people to answer the phone and answer call lights, so the nurses can actually take care of their patients.

I never complain, but others have been told by management that if they are unhappy, they know where the door is. It is so tempting to go through that door and take as many people as possible with me, preferably all on the same day. I fantasize about taking all of my coworkers to job interviews with me, all getting hired elsewhere and leaving on the same day in a mass exodus. But who wants to take that kind of pay cut?

So, anyway, that is why I haven't blogged much lately. Who wants to listen to people complain?