Rant of Frustration

Things (where I work) are a huge pain in the neck, now that we have moved into our new unit. My *"Well Known Hospital" system, is all about public image and branding and la la la la................while crushing the life out of the workers. In the past two years they have outsourced Dietary, Laboratory, Medical Records, Housekeeping, Staffing, etc.

 The latest debacle is a computer based "Tele-Tracking" bed placement, Transporter Directory, bed and pillow locator all rolled into one. Previously, Transporters were Unit based, meaning that Radiology would own some and Cath Lab / Surgery would own some, and we had one and so on. Now, all Transporters are in one big pool, and they are directed by pager to respond to all calls (lumped into some kind of queue), the end result being, when I request a wheelchair or need to transport my patient somewhere, I don't have a clue, how long it is going to take somebody to show up. Previously a phone call to our own transporter, would have answered that question. 

Our own Unit transporter, they were the ones that would do the Hair Clipping for the preop-preps, which can be hugely time consuming (for the open heart patients). Hairy apes can take 45 minutes to an hour. Patients come to us a day or two before surgery to get Labs, Xray, teaching, meet the Anesthesiologist, maybe have a PFT and so on. This typically takes about 3 hours, and now the RN, is assigned the Salon job too. Lets see, I think that means having the $60 dollar per hour hair cutter, instead of the previous $20 dollar per hour technician to do the same job. The RN is then reprimanded by the Charge Nurse, "Why are the pre-ops taking longer now?". 

And now, we have become the designated Procedural Sedation Nurses, for the Bronch Lab that is adjacent to our Unit. I like doing them, but then I am out of the Unit for at least two hours for Prep, Procedure and Recovery, which can have a major impact on my fellow nurses elsewhere. 

If a genuine "work-flow" study were done, these glaring inefficiencies would be revealed. But you and I know the answers; Management doesn't give a damn. They know that the public will love our pretty shiny new Unit/building and workers can always be replaced, preferably by someone younger, less experienced, and thus, lower paid.

Can I put up with this another four years? I truly don't know.