You'll find lazy people wherever you go. I worked for years outside the health field and witnessed sloth among both genders and all ages. I once worked at a corporation where one staff member took a nap daily from about 9:00 am to 10:00 am. He insisted in his loudest voice that "I'm just resting my eyes!" when I once asked him if he wasn't worried about getting caught sleeping.

  But my experience with even some landmarks of sloth hardly prepared me for the inertia I would see daily at two different large hospitals, the first one as an aide, the second one as an RN.

  I wonder if other members of NL have found instances like the following common:  RNs and some LPNs who almost daily work just one-third to one-half of their shift.  These slugs tend to work night shift, when they have very few discharges to process, and very few new doctor's orders to implement. Also, they almost never miss a lunch break, and almost daily extend their lunch to twice the allotted time. They also find ingenious ways to NOT tend to their assigned patients, and they generally decline to help you if you need a hand.

  They also find ways to seldom handle transfer patients and new admissions; someone else gets the assignments--typically the newest nurses hired and occasionally a nurse who is floated to the unit. Sometimes newcomers, such as myself, take a long time to realize that  they've more or less been taking back-to-back admissions: they get the latest admit at the start of shift, who may have little or nothing yet done for him,  and also the next admit, which is termed "the first admit."  One nurse I knew who was newly hired but who also happened to be a veteran RN immediately understood that a charge nurse (read "slug") was trying to assign back-to-back admits. The newbie refused, and she refused so loudly and vehemently that the charge/slug nurse wordlessly took the admit herself.

   Perhaps not surprisingly, most of the slugs I've known happened to be morbidly obese. These women stood about 5'4" to 5'7" and weighed about 300 to 400 lbs. Eventually I realized that an ordinary trip walking up and down the hall looked like an exertion to them because it was an exertion.

   One RN slug--this one was merely overweight--told me once that she had rheumatoid arthritis; one of her knees seemed particularly painful.

   I often used to help the latter with her patients until I realized that she'd been ducking her assignments and more or less slamming other nurses with the toughest patients.

   I learned quickly that you could seldom carry a nurse who was having trouble with even  the ordinary physical demands of the job.

   Of course, if you wagered that some of these slug nurses lightened their burden by not actually passing some meds or not changing some dressings or not performing other aspects of patient care, you'd probably win the bet.

   Does this kind of sloth seem all too familiar to some of the NL members here? Anyone else out there wondering how some of these slugs manage to hold onto their job and license? Moreover, does this sort of thing seem to happen mostly in hospitals or in other areas of nursing, too?

Not only have I seen it, all nurses with any experience at all have seen it. And experienced it. And felt it. Addtionally if you are a go-getter this group, nurses, will take advantage of that and use you until they use you up. When you've had it and get mad because they won't stop it, then you get labelled an anatomical structure. Then they get mad and show you the female side of themselves. Not literally, thank God, because most of the slugs are obese and ugly inside and out.

My guess is his chance of landing in a nursing home are minimal while your chances at working at one when you are way past what we consider as retirement age are great.

I think you have a cerebral perfusion abnormality. Reread the post. It doesn't mention retiring, just using it as a reference point to age. Typical of many here to not be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. Did you know you can work, be paid and still give more than the taxes you whine about?

Your making fun of people that are earning an honest living, yet claiming to be altruist for the 'poor downtrodden' that's the hypocrisy, and you aren't who you say you are. 

I'm laughing at you.

I'll venture a guess that The Laugher has never been in the service of the US. Oh yeah that's right. She's a nurse or a wannabe nurse. Sorry.

Anonymous says ...

No, but I've seen a nurse around here, that doesn't like working with women, doesn't like ignorance, doesn't believe in a higher power, and thinks that his education = intelligence (LOL), thinks everyone at gun shows are hicks (than whats he doing there, Ya think there might be a reason they feel comfortable with him), and has abandoned his republican ideals for the most liberal man ever to walk into the senate (that's a state of confusion if I ever saw one)

That's going to be one lonely old man in the nursing home, and geez I hope I don't have to take care of him,

HI.. my name is ALPHAMALE and I approve this message... you know I really do like the attention.. you might want to not do this any more.. just a suggestion... may I add you to my followers on Facebook? And guess what.. not EVERY thread is about me... but I do thank you for trying to make that a reality.

YEP def have seen this!!! and I'm among a CNA group and man these girls sure know how to piss off newbies giving them the REALLY cranky ppl.

i've had this fellow nurses ask me to "help" them and give a pain med for them which i did, only to find them 20min later sitting at the PC doing online shopping...ya, never again honey. usually just try and keep busy and stay away from that type. 

there are slugs all over in every job. Even on this site. Remember why you went into nursing and rise above it.......

The issue about sloth has been distracting us from another issue. Many of these slugs just can't handle the job, and somehow we're failing to realize it.

I've often witnessed RNs with heights of 5'4" to 5'7" and weights of  300 to 400 pounds extend themselves with mild walking. Some of the activities that are tasks to many of us--bending, reaching, stooping, lifting--are exertions to the morbidly obese, if they can manage them at all.

Rather than morbidly obese, it would probably be more appropriate to call many of these RNs "mortally obese," a term I first heard used by a surgeon and author, Atul Gawande. 

We know that ordinary obesity leads to heart problems. We tend to forget that it also leads to joint inflammation, including back and knee pain.

So in some cases, RNs carrying an enormous load of weight are doing so using a compromised back and weakened legs. Could some of them right themselves by themselves if they fell down? Not likely.

Now imagine some other RNs almost hobbled by arthritis or joint injuries. If you've had a temporary joint problem, you know that working with one is painful and difficult. How does someone with a degenerative joint disease manage to work? I've seen only one out of 5 RNs with one or more joint problems handle the routine demands of nursing.

By now, I've seen over a half dozen RNs panic--panic--over minor tasks like changing an incontinent patient's bed. In all but one case, the RNs were enormously obese or sufferers of one or more joint problems.

What's been the pattern I've witnessed with RNs impaired by weight or movement? They find ways to shift work and problems onto others. They make their problems your problem. God help you and your patients if you work shifts where there are two or more of these RN slugs on the same shift. You wind up covering the tough patients, your duties, and some of their duties, too.

If you listen to some of these slothful RNs when they get angry, which tends to be often, you often hear something else in their voices, too:  fear.

If you happen to be a manager and you have several of these kinds of RNs on your staff, accustom yourself to a steady turnover of RNs and support personnel, and the expense of frequent new hires, and complaints from patients and families. You'll be seeing plenty of them.