If work were a playground implement, it would surely be a teeter-totter with all its ups and downs. The clinic has been unusually slow of late, so I have been trying to help more on the floor which does little more than reassure me that I am right were I need to be in the clinic. It isn't that it is awful out there, but my god is it different. Essentially, it is just me pushing around a cart and trying like hell not to get lost as I quite literally do not know where I am going most of the time, especially if it is a rarely visited area outside of the normal rounds to begin with (like CT.......evidently somewhere in the labyrinth on the first floor diagnostics side......I assume anyway as no signage exists). Then, the PIV starts themselves are often a high degree of difficulty, with one usable arm and littered with bruises from previously blown IV sites leaving you with nearly nothing to attempt at all. You definitely run the gamut from success to abject failure within most hours if not within the shift itself. In short, I will take my cocoon like clinic thank you very much!
Now I just need more patients to show up. I suppose some could be scared off by the fact that we close haphazardly when I am elsewhere, can't take certain patients because we don't have a second nurse, and turn away patients fairly frequently when I am busy and cannot get another RN here to help. Not exactly a business model that ensures success. I mean, would you go to a restaurant that turned you away one day because a server called in sick and so they couldn't seat you even though the restaurant wasn't full? Or if it closed without any seeming reason just because? Or what if they told you they could seat you, but not your partner? I know I would be looking elsewhere to eat. Especially if there was a restaurant right next door that had few of the same complications.
But, to the good, we did get a raise (or will get one starting in October) after a survey of other hospitals concluded that we were underpaid. While I understand nursing is a skilled profession and we do a lot of things that most people would not want to do, I can't say that I felt underpaid at any point since I have starting working in the hospital. Nor can I say that, looking around, our pay structure is lower than other hospitals. However, it evidently must be so as I am certain they wouldn't just be gifting us such a thing. As such, I will happily take my 4.8% raise and be quite content.
Tia's job is unfortunately moving in the other direction. She is over funded for her position, and there seems to be no let up in sight. Her job is different in that she is funded by percentages on different projects. So, in essence, she works for quite a few different people because of it. So, person A may fund 65% of her time and person B 35%, which would work out well. However, she also has person C for 25% and person D for 15%. So, when you get down to it, she has 40 hours to do 56 hours of work a week. I can't say I truly understand how it works, because to me it would seem like they would logically cap this number at something like 100% (reasonable) or 110% for short durations if needed and make that a hard cap. So, if you want or need to work on person's D's project, you have to reduce your time on another project accordingly. The other variable that makes that difficult however is that the projects don't have consistent start and end points and percentages vary within the span of a project as well. In short, it is a logistical nightmare. Suffice to say, it is all driving Tia a little batty, especially since the person with the bulk of her project time is rather unyielding and seemingly hopelessly daft. The kind of person whom would give you a dollar and then say she wants 2 items that each cost 75 cents and then suggest you find a way to make that happen.
In other news, we finally broke down and bought 2 real honest to goodness bicycles after coming to the mutual conclusion that our current bicycles, while in every sense bike-like (wheels, pedals, and all that good stuff), were woefully insufficient for our purposes. Now, I am not going to contend that I am a 'bike person', but in order to work towards becoming one my ride needs to be one I don't dread with every fiber of my being. We started out with some cheap bikes from, I believe, Kmart. The price is lost to me, but I know they cost less than $175 for the pair. They rode about as well as you might expect. I suppose it was quicker than walking, but only just, and far less pleasant. After selling them off, we bought some nicer bikes, more than doubling our initial investment. However, though they are twice as good (perhaps more) than the cheap pair, they were still heavy and a struggle to ride. Certainly, at no point, were we compelled to ride them for any purpose other than to work and to home and even then not with regularity.
As is my wont, I started to do some research and gather opinions. There is consensus about getting what you pay for, but not necessarily how much you should pay. From experience we now know that buying the cheapest bike is not necessarily the most advantageous decision. The same could be said of shoes, or cars, or on and on really. But, there is also a decrease in the utility of that statement over a certain dollar figure. A nice, solid pair of Danskos will last you a few years of very routine wear and, for this you will pay about $120. Or, you could buy a $50 pair of shoes that will last you 6-8 months. Or, you could by a designer pair of shoes for $500 that will last just as long as the Danskos but have more flash. For me, it is worth it for the Danskos, not for the designer shoes. I have no compunction to say, ride competitively so the benefit gained from spending more than $12-$1500 for a bike would be marginal for me (and they evidently go up to $10K). We finally settled on visiting an outlet of one of the local bike shops and, hopefully, we have found our matches in the $600 range (originally $850). They are lighter than our old bikes by far, have better components for easier shifting, more gears, and have a better power to effort ratio. In short, by far and away the nicest bike I have ever owned. Now I just need to get some spandex!
No comments:
Post a Comment