There's a vote on my unit and the new grads are asking me what to do
Riley in the break roomThe question
Two years in, which apparently makes me the senior voice three people came to this week.
I don't want to tell anybody how to vote. What I want is to be able to say what changes and what doesn't, and it turns out I can't, because everything I know arrived from people with strong feelings pointing in both directions.
So, plainly. If your unit went through this, what changed in the six months after, day to day? Scheduling, floating, who gets pulled first, the stuff you feel on a Tuesday. And if you were a new grad while it was happening, did anyone tell you where you stood?
The conversation
2 replies- Marisol on oncologyRN, oncology, 2 years
Ours went through it during my first year. What changed on a Tuesday: the float order got written down. Before that it was whoever the charge thought could cope, which in practice meant me.
What didn't change: a bad night is still a bad night. A written rule tells you what is supposed to happen and it doesn't produce a nurse who isn't in the building.
Nobody told me where I stood as a new grad, and I wish somebody had. Ask directly what applies to you while you're still on orientation, because that's the part with the most variation in it.
- Noor on postpartumRN, postpartum, a year in
The part I'd add is about the room rather than the outcome. Ours got tense for about eight weeks, and it got tense between people who had worked well together in March.
If three people are coming to you, the useful thing you can do is say out loud that you're keeping it to yourself. I watched two nurses lose a friendship over each assuming they knew where the other one stood, and neither of them ever asked.
What would you tell them?
Answer from what you have seen. It posts without your name.