This is nursing, my 7th day of employment at a new unit. Coworker is in her early 60s on the fatter and smaller side, walks slowly, bouncing her whole body to left and right, is slow giving report, even though she has less patients than me and feels entitled not to deliver and pick up trays or drinks to patients, the whole 24 of them, looking for stuff to do at the computer when the time comes, conveniently sitting, while the rest of us do her effing job. Last time we had shift together I invited her to work with us, which she ignored.
I dread the day I have a shift alone with her with no helper. This unit seems to be perpetually understaffed: Normal seems to be 2 RN for the whole unit when there should be 3. If we’re lucky, we get a helper (not a RN).
On one hand I feel I should tolerate it because she is almost a senior and apparently is difficult for her to walk.
But this feelings of compassion disappear when I see her pretending to be busy while I’m moving patients, delivering trays, preparing drinks and sometimes feeding them. Her entitlement expecting I do her job no questioning it is what irks me the most. Employee me says escalate, make known this bothers me this much, but don’t know what an appropriate reaction to this looks like.
As said, I just started working there 7 days ago. She’s been at this unit much longer than me, which means management must know and tolerate this. Nursing is known for cliques.
Nursing is a little different from most kinds of work environments, but not that different.
I think there’s 2 halves to unpack here. One is her ability and the other is her attitude. If someone is getting along in their career and has trouble hustling around on their feet for 8 or 12 hours, I get it. They can move slower or take longer sitting breaks when there’s no patient in dire need. That’s why people work on teams.
But then there’s the attitude part. Are other nurses dealing with her patients on the regular? Is she ignoring call bells? Is she never making any effort to help a fellow nurse when they’re swamped? Then we have a problem.
Like you said, you’re new and it’s not the time to go in guns blazing. Your reputation doesn’t mean shit for a while now, but I don’t think that means you should just suck it up and do your job in spite of it.
I would mention it casually to your manager. Not as a complaint (see: your reputation doesn’t mean shit), but as a casual concern. “I didn’t want to say anything to X, but I’ve been noticing since I started that she seems to really struggle to deal with her patient load.” Whether you try to frame that along with “how can I help?” or something else is up to you.
The main thing you want to take away is:
These sorts of dramas play out slowly. The best thing you can do is collect information you can refer back to later in case things take a twist.
I can’t tell you how many times in my life an employee has become “a problem” in management’s eyes, but we’re starting at 0 because nobody ever complained or documented any of the issues that were going on for YEARS.
Good advice, but I would ask around with coworkers first. It might be something like: the person in question has been given a reduced load because they’re just coming back from a heart attack.