fried, not fired
you know when you are stressing about a certain information and you wish you never had the chance to know that information?
a few days ago, i was told about K’s imminent termination. the details were all against her, and everybody hates the fact that she can get fired anytime, but there is nothing they can do about it. apparently, everybody knows about the impending bad news. everybody but K.
it was persistently in my head, so i had to tell other people who know her and care. at one point, there was this brilliant suggestion that i should tell her about it so she can get ready and look for another job before the big “you’re fired” drama. i thought that was not fair, because i am not the kind of person who gets elated in breaking a bad news, but i admit it would be the least i can do to help her.
i played the scene of being fired in my head, and didn’t really like it. not only that there are mortgage and bills to be paid, christmas is also approaching. although it is true that christmas is a season of giving, it is also a season for spending. losing a job at this time of the year is like adding insult to injury.
i knew the importance of telling her, but i stalled.
something like this might be very simple for other people but it was something extremely difficult for me, so i kept looking for a way out. i reasoned i wanted to get the facts first and make sure what i was told was valid information. my plan was to talk to the nurse manager and confirm the gossip before i finally talk to K.
only, even this idea sucked. i hated the aniticipation of a confirmation. it was clear to me that i did not have a plan of influencing the nurse manager to change her decision if she felt it was fitting for K to leave. i know she had to do what she had to do to keep their unit running smoothly. besides, i know i don’t have that kind of influence. all i really wanted was to give K a heads up so she won’t splurge on her chirstmas shopping, and she can get ready to face the reality of looking for another job. just that. but still, i stalled. i didn’t go out of my way to see the manager. i was just secretly and passively hoping for an accidental encounter.
last night, the problem took care of itself. somebody, somebody who obviously has more guts than i have, actually called the nurse manager to get the facts straight. thank heavens, K will not be fired instantly. she will be given “the talk” first. as implied, K will be given another chance to correct her mistakes. i could have saved everybody the trouble of worrying if i did what i was supposed to do the moment i was supposed to do it.
just a thought…what if the nurse manager didn’t feel like giving K another chance? what if she just shocked and fired her right away? the pain of being in between jobs is not an easy thing to discuss, so let’s not go there.
relieved as i am, i also feel terrible. i am such a wimp.
why is it that even good intentions cannot give me enough courage to do what is helpful?i’m supposed to be a grown up but i do not act like one.
when will that change?
anyway, i can only hope that if i was in K’s shoes, people who know me will not be a coward like me.
i would also be a wimp in a situation like that. who would really want to be the bearer of the bad news right? but i’m glad that your nurse manager still gave her another chance. some wouldn’t. it’s not easy to find yourself unemployed especially with christmas and new year a few weeks from now.
Comment by andre — November 30, 2007 @ 7:50 am
I wouldn’t consider you a wimp in this situation at all. As a matter of fact, I think it was best not to say anything at all. Did the news of her impending “terminiation” come straight from the nurse manager? It sounds like it started out as gossip, and based on what the nurse manager did say when she was finally asked didn’t fully support what everyone thought was going to happen.
Comment by Labor Nurse — November 30, 2007 @ 10:49 am
I don’t think it would have been right for you to intervene unless you know the nabager personally and had a good relationship with her. you might otherwise have found that you had made the situation worse, with the manager thinking that there must be a lot of truth to the allegations.
Comment by Elaine — November 30, 2007 @ 11:14 am
One, it’s not your job to tell her. Two, the whole thing should have been moot to begin with because it’s fairly unreasonable that, in your words, “everyone but K” knew. That’s a pretty serious failure on your manager’s part (or whichever member of your floor’s management she chose to share that with).
Personally, if i were K, i wouldn’t have taken the news well from anyone, not even someone with my best intentions at heart. At best, i’d have some serious issues with management if i got the news from a fellow staff nurse before i heard it from my boss. At worst, i’d think that you were playing games with me and trying to get me to quit, no matter how it was presented.
Speaking as a former (non-hospital) manager, it’s your manager’s job to handle personnel issues. There are weird legalities and corporate policies involved regarding information about a person’s employment and the means by which someone is terminated. Don’t feel bad because your manager wasn’t doing her/his job correctly.
Comment by Nurse Bear — December 2, 2007 @ 1:59 am
You were wise to follow your instincts and not say anything. This type of information is confidential and should never get out in the rumor mill.
Comment by Eliza — December 2, 2007 @ 9:34 pm
By revealing information shared with you in confidence, you would not only have given your employer cause to terminate your employment as well, but you very well could have sullied your reputation in the market as well.
However, one must question why such confidential information was shared with you in the first place. As a manager, I’ve been given advance notice of the termination of subordinates in in other departments to be alert in case that action might affect those on my team, but never of a peer’s termination.
Without any direct knowledge here, it would be unwise to question management’s approach here. However, as a general rule, I believe that termination for cause should NEVER come as a surprise. If managment is operating properly and there is open and honest communication, the employee should have been given ample notice of any performance deficiencies or infractions as well as ample opportunity to correct any or receive training to correct them.
This (a performance improvement plan or employee probation) should be memorialized in written policy either shared with new employees as part of their onboarding, or readily available for all employees to view on demand.
Though it may not feel like it, you did do the right thing by not divulging what you had been told. That’s not wimpy, it is smart.
Comment by MB, NRN (not an RN) — December 3, 2007 @ 5:23 am
some clarifications: K does not work in the same unit with me, but on the same floor. most of her coworkers though are people i used to work with, and they know our husbands are related. they know for a fact that a couple of nurses have written her up for some errors, and they aniticipated the termination, because in our hospital three write ups are considered very serious and can be a valid reason for termination if proven true. they thought i should warn her before she gets the dreaded three, because they know other people have expressed plans to write her up too. my former coworker who expressed concern felt that K seemed very oblivious to the facts that she has been making the same mistakes and she needs to be more careful.
Comment by may — December 3, 2007 @ 12:03 pm
Here’s the bad news. The nurse manager violated professional and perhaps legal rules regarding discussing the employee’s performance improvement plan with anyone other than the employee. Now, if K’s coworkers saw K making mistakes, according to the code of ethics, those coworkers have accountability for K’s performance…meaning, they do have accountability to address the performance issue so that patient care is not compromised.
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