This isn't going to be easy to write. When I generally go down a path like this, looking at options of how the near future of my life will go, I tend to make a change. And I'm not sure I want to make a change.
There are three distinct times I can remember this happening. Me thinking about what to do next and then making a move. The first was a relatively small change, but felt big at the time. I was working at McDonalds and didn't want to be. I had some money from a lawsuit my parents filed on my behalf as a minor and now had access to it. I didn't 'need' to work. I sat on break out in the lobby with a friend and uses a salt and pepper shaker to measure the outcome. I had a work ethic instilled into me by my father and quitting was just wrong. Move the shakers toward the salt side. I didn't need to work and not working is better than working. Move the shakers toward the pepper side. More money is better than less. Salt. I had thousands of dollars at my disposal making the couple hundred I was making per week petty in comparison. Pepper. Time with my friends. Pepper. A better chance at getting another job later. Salt. I kept at this with my friend helping me weigh each point (weighing meant how far to push the shakers with the 'goal' of either pushing them off in the 'stay working' side or the 'quitting' side. I had the shakers just about at the 'stay working' side... I just needed one more little point.... when the manager walked by in an obvious bad mood and told me to get back to work or she'd write me up.
The shakers got pushed off the other side of the table and I quit on the spot.
The next time was school. I was at Ferris State University trying to figure out if I should remain in the optometry track or move on to something else. I was almost sure the 'something else' would be photography as I adored working for the university photographer, but it wasn't an easy decision. That was the first year I took on student loans (I had a full ride scholarship before that) and changing my degree path would mean even more student loans. Ending up an Optometrist would mean easily paying off the loans, but a photographer? I didn't even know what a photographer made. This was tougher and not nearly as fast as the McDonalds decision. I hemmed and hawed for a couple weeks, maybe a month, but finally decided to change. By now you should know how that worked out.
The last version of this is my most recent job change. I'd worked as an intake nurse at the prison's reception center for the past 2.5 years. I'd had a goal of being a nurse manager after 5 years nursing and had just passed that point, but honestly liked the job. There wasn't a good reason to change, especially as there was little to no chance of being a nurse manager at that particular facility. I probably went back and forth for a good three months, thinking I'd finally end up in a 'stay the course' decision. But then the 'bad' nurse got under my skin and she was the camel that broke my back. I didn't want to work with her anymore and if I was going to make a change, it would be into management and not just to another facility. I've now been a nurse manager for 3 years. Almost 2 of those years in fucking COVID.
Now I need to make another decision. Stay where I am or move on... without a clear direction of where I'd move on to. I guess I need to go over why I'm even considering this, what's bad about my current job, before I get into possible options for the future.
A lot of these problems are COVID-19 related. That makes it harder as these may be short term problems... short term in the idea of the 20 or so years I have yet to work, but we're still talking years.
I've talked a bit about problems I have at work. None of these have resolved. I'm constantly behind at work. My tasks are simple, there are just too many of them. Basic supervisor tasks I have to do, before any additional special projects are laid on my lap, include counting the critical tools, counting the controlled substances, answering letters written to me, answering health grievances put in against the department, doing the weekly case management on our sickest patients.... and the schedule. The schedule, unfortunately, takes up about 60% of my time. Beyond the schedule, none of these tasks are difficult. They don't take up a lot of time. But tag on the extras; answering questions from housing unit officers and councilors, clearing inmates for medical runs, prepping paroles, doing audits on our policy directives, performing interviews, counseling nurses who aren't performing well or are actively disobeying work rules... and I get to the point that I'm never done. I don't leave work when I'm finished, I leave when I've decided it's time to go and to pick up the tasks the next day.
Now, our facility should have three supervisors plus the health unit manager. Again, I've talked about this before, but we're down a supervisor. There should be one for the north side of the complex, one for the south, and one for the RTP units. The RTP supervisor has the least amount of 'normal' work so they generally get the schedule. It's where I started and I wasn't doing a great job at it, but believe I could excel at it now. Well, we have a north supervisor that handles the RTP units and a south supervisor (me) that handles the scheduling. It's Just To Much! And to make matters worse, when we were given the opportunity to fill the third supervisor position our HUM nixed all the candidates. They were either 'lazy' or had knocks against them from the Warden's office. Understand, the warden doesn't get hire/fire decisions in the healthcare department but our HUM just takes what he says as gospel (an example is that she was going to take some time off next week, but he said it was too busy... so she's not taking the time off. HE DOESN'T GET TO DECIDE WHEN SHE DOES OR DOESN'T WORK!!!!).
Anyway, we had that position open with two applicants. The others didn't apply as they were told they wouldn't get it. The two that applied were both admittedly lazy. BUT a lazy nurse manager is better than no nurse manager. Yes, I'd rather us have a great team of supervisors, but holding out for perfection is the ruination of the possible good. We ruined the possible good because instead of hiring one of these and making them into the supervisor that could work with us, the position was closed. Permanently. So far as I've seen, we no longer have three nursing supervisor positions, we only have two.
Did I mention that the other supervisor is leaving? Because she is. In a couple weeks we'll be down to the HUM and myself. I'll be the supervisor of the north (saying it that way always makes me think of Game of Thrones), the supervisor of the south, and the supervisor of RTP. And I'll still have the schedule. The HUM told me that she was told (someone told her this!) to NOT take the schedule from me. Okay. Let's put this into a simple equation. I cannot get the schedule and my current job (supervisor of the south side) done now. In a couple weeks nothing will be taken off my plate and I'm going to pick up supervisor duties of the north side and RTP units. And I've been written up for not getting my job done.
I honestly don't see another way to look at this. If you deliberately and maliciously wanted to set me up to fail, this would be the way. I'll be fucked.
Oh, did I tell you that I'm expected to work on the clinic floor now too? Because I am.
You see, our staffing is beyond low. We should have roughly 45 nurses. Last year when we were so low that everybody was complaining about it, we were down to about 32 or 33 nurses. We're now dropping below 30. Each nurse that leaves makes more overtime to cover as we don't have enough nurses to cover the number of shifts we have. We have nurses that want overtime and soak up a lot of it, but they can't take it all which means I have to mandate nurses to work them. So each nurse that leaves makes more mandates shifts, which makes nurses want to leave, which makes more mandated shifts, which makes nurses want to leave, which makes more.... We're fucked. I just got another letter of resignation on Christmas Eve.
I'm told by the HUM that we just can't mandate the nurses this much and one of the solutions (the only solution offered so far) is for the supervisors to pick up some shifts. The HUM isn't supposed to do this. With as much as I hate the idea of picking up extra shifts, I can appreciate it. But the problem is timing. My shift is roughly 1130 to 2000. The afternoon shift in the clinic is 1330 to 2200. I may only have to extend my shift by a couple hours to cover, but that's leaving my own work behind from 1330 to 2000. That's 6.5 hours of my work that I'm not getting done. And not to beat a dead horse, but I'm getting in trouble for NOT DOING MY TASKS! I'll just copy and paste from above:
I honestly don't see another way to look at this. If you deliberately and maliciously wanted to set me up to fail, this would be the way. I'll be fucked.
I don't see an end to this tunnel. Hiring nurses has been turned upsideown and on its head. Everyplace is short of nurses, but the big difference between the state and a hospital is that they can quickly move to have incentives. The state recently put in place a $5000 annual retention bonus for RNs. They'd been working on it for about 5 years... long before COVID. I found out from my cousin, who manages the local hospital's gift shop, that their hire-on bonus for nurses is $10,000. Oh, I'm sorry, that's the bonus SHE would get for referring a nurse that got hired. The nurse would get $30,000.
With everything being equal, it's harder to hire nurses into corrections than a hospital. The only factor that helped even it out was our benefits package. But benefits only gets you so far. Now a nurse looking for a job will see a $25,000 delta in hiring bonuses. Why would they think any retention bonus would be different? Oh, and did I mention the hospitals are now paying more per hour for nurses? Because they are. Take in the retention bonus for our nurses and the hospitals make that up in hourly wages.
I can't blame my nurses or leaving. Seriously, how could you look at numbers like that and not completely reconsider you and your family's financial health. How can --> I <-- not completely reconsider my financial health?
My answer, at least when it comes to the hospital, is fairly easy. I don't want to work at the hospital. It's a different kind of nursing. One I like less. AND it's been almost 10 years now since I did my clinicals which are the ONLY hospital experiences I have.
So lets step back and look at this.
My job was hard, but I think I could get a good handle on it now. But we're down a supervisor and that makes my jog just a bit too hard and I'm getting written up for not getting it done. We're in the middle of a staffing shortage that I have no idea how to fix nor any idea how long it will last, which makes me working on the floor multiple times a week seem more and more likely, which will make my job even more difficult.
On the other side, there are more opportunities than ever. Everybody is looking for nurses. About the only thing I don't believe I could do is work at another correctional facility as I just don't see them letting me go when our situation is so dire. If I leave the state service, I turn my back on my 401k and all my benefits... and I like my benefits.
But last week I found something. I was looking through the state job listings to see how they listed the jobs (hoping to convince a couple contractual nurses to hire on and there fore spread out the mandations among more nurses) and saw that there are nurse manager positions from the state. They just aren't in corrections. The department of Health and Human Services have several mental health hospitals around the state and beyond corrections, that's the biggest number of nurses they hire. There were multiple openings listed. They paid what I'm making now. They had the same benefits that I get now. Hell, they even had the same job category I have now (RN13).
Now, taking a new job isn't as easy as 'Lets Go!'. There's a "salt and pepper" argument to be had.
- Salt (pro mental health nurse manager)
- I escape an impossible situation at my current job
- I escape the staffing shortage at my current facility
- I get something new
- I love new!
- I don't miss a beat when it comes to my retirement
- So far as I know, I get a more relaxed job as this is more about group environments and doesn't involve violent prisoners
- I should be able to make a good case as I have direct mental health experience in the form of the RTP units
- It's not a prison which means stuff like wearing a smart watch, keeping my phone on me, bringing in open beverages and a variety of snackes
- In short, not working behind a secured perimiter
- Adding variety to my career will only help in any other jobs I may want to get later
- "I was a correctional nurse for 8 years and a mental health nurse for an additional 6"
- Pepper (pro staying where the fuck I am)
- I'm comfortable
- Not comfortable comfortable, but I know my job. I know my crew. I know what's expected and not expected.
- I can walk through many parts of my job on auto pilot, something I won't be able to do with a new job. At least for a few years.
- My boss and crew know me.
- The HUM knows my strengths
- The crew knows I follow the rules but will bend as far as I can to help them out
- There's a pride I have in saying "I'm a correctional nurse"
- Kind of makes me sound like a bad ass!
- My FMLA is a known quantity
- What would a new job do with my migraines?
- I don't like mental health
- This isn't a small thing. I prefer educational nursing above all but a close second is wound care. Taking a wound and making it better day by day, actually seeing something improve.
- Mental health doesn't always improve like that, and even then improvements can be knocked back quickly.
- I have ideal hours
- Starting work in the late morning and getting out in the evening is ideal for me. These jobs might be night hours, they might be day hours, I just don't know.
- As much as I love new, I fear change
- New is great if it works out but what if it doesn't?
- It's like ordering a new dish at a new restaurant. It might really suck and then I'm out a dinner. But in this case I'd be out a career or at least years of my career.
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