Can a job be too easy?

 Can a job be too easy?  It seems like a simple question, but I'm honestly have to answer it and all the sub questions that come with it.  What exactly defines 'easy' when it comes to a job.  Is it better to have a difficult job or an easy one?  Is it okay to be around people that complain about how difficult their easy job is?  Let's dig into this because its all relevant.  

I'm not sure exactly how a job could be too easy.  As that's the ultimate question, lets go over some of the other questions and hopefully they'll lead to an obvious answer.  

What defines 'easy' at a job?  Well, not being mentally, physically, or emotionally overpowering.  The physical part is easy.  All my nursing jobs have fallen into that.  Floor nurse, reception nurse, nurse manager, and now nurse manager again.  The worst thing about this job, physically, is a call over the PA for all staff to come to a particular unit.  

This is another difference between working in the prison and working in a a mental health hospital.  In the prison the officers were more well equipped to handle 'bad things'.  I guess that's why they're officers and here I have security agents.  On Thursday, while shadowing one of the afternoon nurse mangers we had two such calls.  One for an Elopement and one general call for all staff.  The elopement was just sad... someone was trying to escape.  He jumped a fence, jumped another fence, and was climbing the perimeter fence.  The perimeter fence isn't as secure as the prison's double perimeter fence as both were topped by coiled razor wire, but the top of this fence IS electrified and curved inward.  You'd have to dangle on the wires while being electrocuted.  Not enough to kill, but certainly enough to be painful and to make it unlikely for you to keep a grip strong enough to hold yourself.  

After he dropped down the security staff got to him, put him into a double hold (one agent on each arm) and they escorted him into the restraint bed.  He had injured himself so he was an obvious danger to himself.  BUT when they saw him running across the yard they called for all staff to go to that unit.  All staff isn't ALL staff, it's staff that isn't providing direct patient care at that moment.  So extra security agents from each unit, the security supervisors, the nurse managers, the assistant director of nursing... people like that.  And when they want you to report, they want you to run.  I don't think I've run for a job in decades.  I moved fast in the prison system, but even a life saving event would have been hindered if I got there out of breath and unable to perform my duties.  Here?  They want you to run. So I ran and got there out of breath all to do nothing.  It was under control.  

When they call out for all staff to a unit it's almost always going to be for a fight.  Whether that's a patient on patient fight or a patient on staff is irrelevant as they want extra staff to help control it.  Now again, it's not fair to compare the prison to a psychiatric hospital but I've SEEN a single officer break up a fight and control the situation.  Here?  It took four security agents to control a fight.  

So yes, there is some physical activity but on a day to day basis this job is just walking around.  It's not particularly time sensitive so it's not even fast walking.  Although I don't really ever walk slow.  

So this job is physically easy.  Not a big deal as every job I can imagine taking would be physically easy. 

What about emotionally easy?  The prison had the advantage as I could always go home with less emotional attachment.  We were REQUIRED to have no emotional attachment.  Yes, it was hard when an inmate died or got really sick (COVID sucked bad) and yes, it was hard when co-workers were going through difficult times... but that's true of any job.  This one?  Well, it's hard seeing the patients go through difficult times but we're talking about mental health, not physical health.  There's already a disconnect as when patients are having a difficult time it's a mental health issue.  Those are just harder to associate with.  Yes, it's tough to see someone lost in a delusion but at the same time... you kind of know they aren't having a difficult time with it.  I think the most emotionally difficult thing I can see happening at this job is dealing with co-workers and I'll deal with that a little later.  

So that leaves mentally easy.  And this is an immediate and emphatic yes.  Yes, this job is mentally easy.  There aren't a lot of standard operating procedures or policies, but that just means it's up to me.  And unless otherwise directed I'll be like I was at the prison; fair, firm, and consistent.  I'll also direct my security supervisors, nurses, and security agents to be the same.  I've been in training for about six weeks now and I've seen absolutely NOTHING that will be mentally difficult.  

And that's IS a problem.  Working at the prison kept me sharp as I had to be on my toes all the time.  Even if it was something as mundane as time management, I couldn't let my guard down as I had to be thinking about it all the time.  Yes, it got to be TOO difficult but I'm not sold on that being worse than something being TOO easy.  

Here are a couple examples of why I see this job as easy.  I had to shadow a floor nurse until I could do their job.  There was several pages of tasks I had to check off and it was easy enough.  Here's their job from 1500 to 2330:

• 1500 get in an get report from the previous nurse
• 1510 count the controlled substances with the previous nurse
• 1520 set up all the meds for the upcoming med passes
• In most units that's a med pass at 1700 and 2000
• 1700 perform the 1700 med pass
• 2000 perform the 2000 med pass
• 2040 clean up the med room
• 2300 give report to and count with the oncoming nurse.  

Setting up the meds might take about an hour.  So that's straight working until 1620.  There are almost some patients that you have to get vitals on (when they're new to the unit, recently back from a hospital, starting certain new meds...) but there really aren't a lot of other tasks to do.  So lets say getting the vitals takes 30 minutes. and I am being ALL kinds of generous on saying it would take 30 minutes... you're straight working until 1650.  Then you do your 1700 med pass but that's generally between three and six patients getting their meds.  That's five to 10 minutes.  Done, including cleaning up the med room at 1715.  

THEN NOTHING ELSE TO DO UNTIL 2000!!!!!

Seriously.  I read Google News.  I read the New York Times.  I played Wordle.  I played the New York Times crossword.  And it doesn't get better for the next med pass.  They all complain about their 'big med pass' but it's about 30 or 40 patients.  It's straight forward, easy, and methodical.  And you're done with it before 2100 with nothing else to do until the end of the shift.  There's as much time sitting around doing nothing as there is doing something else.  

Yes, you have monthly reports to do and yes, there are other incidents that occur that take up time but... well, let me tell you about a 'bad' day when a nurse was not only begging for help but the nurse manager and I came in to help.  This was the day of the elopement.  We were already in the unit, just ran there in fact, so when he freaked out about 'all the work he was going to have to do' we just stayed to provide that help.  I was honestly excited as I finally would get to see what a 'bad' day would be.  

Well, he had to do an initial assessment on the patient as there was a manual hold (the security agents putting their hands on him to escort him back into the facility) and top of the bed restraints (just as it sounds, he's restrained to the top of a bed).  The nurse then has to call the doctor to get medical orders for both the manual holds and the restraints.  Yes, these orders are after the fact, but they're important to get in and it's understood and legal that it happens that way.  The doctor may order meds at that time or he may not.  In this instance he didn't order anything.  Regardless, the doctor has to come in and assess the patient when he may or may not have more orders.  In this instance there were no further orders.  

Now, every hour the nurse has to go in and assess the patient.  A set of vitals, asking if they're okay, and seeing if the restraints are too tight.  It takes five minutes.  If the patient says he does not want to have his vitals taken, it takes two minutes.  I'm including all the time it takes to walk in with the vitals machine, the time it takes to talk to the patient, the time it takes to take the vitals, and the time it takes to leave.  Charting it IS annoying as that takes about ten minutes by itself, but still.... 15 minutes out of every hour.  

The order to keep someone restrained can only last four hours.  At that time the doctor has to come in, assess the patient again, and set up new orders for further restraints (or release him, but releasing him is normally up to the nurse, the nurse manager, and/or the security supervisor).  That timing would have sucked as it was at the same time as the nurses blood sugar checks (two of them) so the nurse manager and I called the doc and explained dour assessments (in this instance the patient was non verbal and barely responsive).  The doc ordered some injectable meds, so we got those together and injected them while the unit nurse got the 2000 med pass ready.  

When the doc came in we talked it over with him and got him to put in his orders right (there can't be a gap between restraint orders otherwise we're restraining a person with no legal authority to do so), then document the exchange.  There were some other tasks we had to do as nurse managers, so when we got back and got it all documented the unit nurse was done with his med pass.  He then took over with the future assessments and documentation.  

That's it.  That was a bad day when the floor nurse needed help.   I was shocked as that would have been an EASY day at the prison.  Seriously, the floor nurse did NOT need our help.  He needed help in time management.  Yeah, maybe he couldn't have documented everything as he went along but he could have kept records and after his med pass, when he had two full hours of nothing, he could have caught up and documented it all.  But everyone, the nurse manager included, was like "See, our days can get SO busy here!"

That's busy for a floor nurse.  Let's talk about busy for the nurse manager.  Here's what I figured out for their normal day between 1430 and 2300:

• 1430 get report from the previous manager and figure out what units they'd be covering
• they will cover units both as a nurse manager AND as a security supervisor if there aren't enough security supervisors
• 1440 go out and set up the units
• in a unit with a security supervisor this means signing the staffing sheet and two round sheets
• in a unit without a security supervisor this means assigning the staff, doing a 'huddle' (a report involving the nurse and the security agents), and singing the same sheets
• 1450-1500 perform the rounds we signed for
• 1530 return to office
• 1830 sign in nurses as they come in and tell them which units they'll be on
• 2130 get report from each of the individual units
• 2230 give report to the oncoming manager and leave as soon as report is given. 

Oh, did I mention that both the floor nurses and the nurse mangers get an hour long lunch?  Because they do.  So if you look at the nurse manager time line, they can actually be on the floor working for 8 hours with an hour of it away on lunch.  

Now yes, there are other things to do and I'm learning more about them, but mostly it's be on hand as the supervisor.  Answer questions.  Be the final judgmental call.  Be around to help when help is needed.  So far, I feel that the nurse managers I've been with have had plenty of time to be with me and help me understand.  That's great, but it also means they HAVE that kind of time.  I would have been pulling my hair out to train a replacement at the prison as there just wasn't that kind of time in my day.  

Without the training, there is going to be a LOT of sitting around.  And I'll have to deal with people asking for help when they can't get their easy jobs done.  Sadly, I'll probably jump in and help as I'll have nothing else to do!!!!  I won't help because they need it, I'll help because I'm bored.  

So we're back to the main question.  Is this job too easy.  I'm afraid the answer is going to be yes.  Yes, his job is too easy.  I'll lose any edge I have.  I'll lose respect for my co-workers.  I'll get just as bitter as I was when I couldn't keep up with my job because it was too difficult.  

I don't know how I'll assess this moving forward.  Maybe I'll figure out that I'm okay with this.  Maybe I'll find out that it's busier or more difficult than I'm seeing.  Maybe.  

Maybe.