More signs of dysfunctional workplaces

This is a great article with a list of those infamous traits. The following seemed to jump out at me based on everything going on lately.

Decisions are made at the highest level  possible.
Regardless of what it is, you have to check with your boss before doing it.  She also has to check with her boss. So does anything really get done? No. Not without a lot of stone rolling up the hill.

Delegating means telling somebody to do something, not giving them the power to do it.
The total antithesis of nursing, but reality sometimes.

Management approaches from the latest best-seller are regularly misunderstood to mean what we're doing already is right on the  mark.
"Seven Habits of Highly Effective People," "Good to Great" and "Who Moved My  Cheese?" all seem to boil down to, "quit griping and do more with less."

Or a Lean Six Sigma class...where the resources just don't happen to be allocated to your department.

Stay tuned...more to come

My nightmare

Shooting outside rehab hospital (from Washington Post)

It is my nightmare because some of my coworkers remember when the same thing happened on one off-hours shift at the Hotel. It happened on one of our sister units and our folks were dispatched to respond.

Even though no patients were involved in our incident, the mere thought of it brings shivers down my  spine. I am happy as a clam when security comes by for their regularly scheduled panic button check.

Because I hope and pray that it never, ever happens again.

Catastrophe and chicanery

It never fails...the Hotel doesn't change.

Who else would put up with one person who constantly talks about being on the "team" and working together and then when the team needs him/her the most, because two of the folks working have very close relatives who have had 1) a stroke and 2) mental status changes after hitting their head, calls in sick leaving the crew horribly short?

Another one of our nurses has sciatica (and a few other medical conditions) so bad that he/she cannot stand to work.

At least, it was pleasant while I worked. Everyone who could, including "Mr/Ms. Team" showed up. I'm just hoping none of our other employees get any ideas about calling in sick while I'm in charge!

Stay tuned...it's one drama after another at the Hotel Rehab.

RehabRN book club

After, I thought about working for an idiot recently I went searching for a few business books and grabbed these two:

The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One that Isn't by Robert I. Patton.

This is a nice, little book. If you read quickly, you'll breeze through it in an afternoon lounging. This book piqued my interest since the author was an academic for a while who wrote an article about workplace assholes for a large, conservative business periodical in which they would not use the A-word in the title. I found this quaint and hysterical at the same time.

The book has lots of facts, no figures, but a great story line we can all enjoy: they're out there, so learn to live with them (or learn to make them go away) or get out.

I also got Mobbing: Emotional Abuse in the American Workplace by Davenport, Schwartz and Elliott. It's also a shorter book, so I plan on reading that before I start my classes again and it's grad school nursing every time I want to read something.

More later, so stay tuned.

Nuggets for December 12

Here are a few of the lastest things I've been reading about from the 'net.

Horizontal violence
Don't know what it is? Think hazing of new nurses. Think less people working with you and taking your place when you retire. Read this interesting article from AdvanceWeb.

MRSA information
See the latest, including podcasts, from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta.

Influenza
Another helpful page from our friends at the CDC.

And finally, in the spirit of the season, something completely different...

Christmas Games
Coffee break time! All those crazy Flash-animated silly games for you to wile away your time at your PC. Pick one that looks interesting and go for it.