This morning I was talking to my husband about work. To help paint the picture, he and I both work for the same company. If any of you have ever worked with your spouse you are relating to me right now! He said that he was talking to our scheduler about how everyone was so busy. He then preceded to tell me that my quota was 60 and I was ONLY at 59. I automatically became defensive because he started to name the other nurses who were going way above their quota by 20 – 30 points. He was asking why I felt busy when I was only meeting my quota.
Today, unlike most days, I decided not to respond just yet. I just decided to process why it bothered me. Here is what I realized…Why do nurses do this to themselves? Why is it automatically expected that we will work more than we agreed to and if we don’t then somehow we are not a “good enough nurse”? Why do I feel bad about myself if I don’t say yes to every request made by my employer? We already joke about how nurses do not stop to go to the bathroom. Honestly, I would love to see UTI statistics for nurses compared to the rest of the world. This is a sad condition to feel like we are not doing a good enough job if we are not overdoing it in our profession.
So, this brings me to my point. Quantity over Quality is a problem. When nurses go above and beyond and see a large number of patients, we are sacrificing quality at some point. Our patients complain all the time about how their doctors only spend a few minutes with them, and then the doctors are off to the next room. Patients say doctors are “in and out,” “they didn’t do anything for me,” and “he didn’t listen”. With quantity driven care the same notions could apply for nurses. Here at PHHNAT, we are looking to help you balance that quality to the quantity. We know that you care or you wouldn’t be out there beating the pavement. We, like you, want to go home at the end of the day knowing that we left our mark in the healthcare field. Come join us and leave your mark!
– Marie Morgan, RN BSN
Oh and P.S.- When I can smell my 630 am coffee in my urine at 6:30 PM…you bet I would be a great candidate for a UTI and a depends commercial!! (nursing humor)
I hear this a lot from other nurses. They feel like more and more, they have to rush to see their patients and of course they feel like quality of care suffers. It seems like in healthcare, clinical or not we all have a quota. What about patient care?