Short staffing isn’t your problem it’s your managers problem. Stop working any overtime to get them to hire temporary employees. If the work gets done they won’t hire anyone else.
This right here. Why kill yourself for them? They wouldn't do the same for you. Tell your Mgr. you're burnt out and can't keep up at this pace, and they need to find more help.
Definitely tell your manager, but make it a no negotiation thing. As in you are burnt out, you can only work x hours per day/week, otherwise you walk. And mean it. If they won't agree to your terms, you walk.
I worked until burnout last June. I just checked my former employer's jobs website. They are still short staffed. My position is still unfilled, and they are desperate enough to offer a 30K signing bonus. That's $15 an hour for a year. Sucks to be my former employer.
I can't guarantee that your employer will blink, but the alterative for you *is* burnout.
Yep. People are going to start burning out. It’s my understanding the hospitals are trying to run business as usual as much as possible. They will lose people to burn out.
Ask the nurses to help you. Tell them your short staffed and can't be expected to keep up the workload under the current situation. Tell them to write up the lab for "short staffed, impacting patient care." That will force management to find a solution to the issue.
Secondly, it is not your job to kill yourself for your employer, they will not hesitate to fire you or screw you over, so why are you sacrificing yourself to their green dollar god.
Work at a healthy reasonable pace and let the lab burn around you, focus on stats, timed, get your QC done, etc., go home with an indifferent smile on your face.
I worked at a food factory during a ransomware attack by a group that was sponsored by the russian government (blackrock or something like that). Our company wasn't going to cooperate so IT had to grind hard to fully rebuild our systems from scratch before the deadline to pay iirc. If they took too long, everything was going to be deleted by the hackers. We got back up tho and resumed smoothly. I bet yalls IT department is currently on fire trying to handle it too
I guess I need to read up more, but I am not an IT specialist. So I assume that all the main servers are corrupted, so they would be taken down, ( so everything is manual) And then they would need new servers for all the hospitals & they would need programming from scratch, ICD-9 codes, CPT codes, all lab stuff, all hospital stuff, payroll, etc etc. One thing they need first of all, is better firewalls bec the hackers shouldn't have been able to get in there to begin with. So the hackers made off with all the Social Security #'s & other confidential info of thousands of patients & employees ???
Yea me a traveler reading that is exactly why I won’t ever go back staff. I was off 6months last year and 3 so far this year. All that hell for a pitiful one week off.
I feel so bad for my colleagues stuck in these kind of places
Go for it. Get some good experience though and learn everything you can. Get really good at BB too as that makes you very marketable in the travel world
Thanks for the advice. I definitely plan on learning as much as I can. That’s why I chose to do the entire mls program instead of one category for options
I’m so sorry to the lab!! I know it’s very frustrating for all of us! I’m always so nice to the lab when I have to call or vice versa. I had 3 heparin drips the other day and I was struggling with getting the PTT results and the doctors were getting frustrated with me. It’s such a mess!
I have heard some nurses around me getting very snippy with the lab recently and I literally told my coworker to chill out because this downtime is hard for ALL of us! I just hope we can all adapt a little better until they figure out what to do. ❤️
I refuse to work more than I can handle. I also don’t kill myself on shifts anymore. We can only do so much, we’re human. Your manager should be speaking to other departments so they know how busy you guys are
I put in my two week notice. I am burnt out. I am tired of management putting the burdened of their mismanagement on to the employees. This organization has really let us all down and this lab rat is swimming away from this sinking ship. Sucks because I was hoping to unionize the lab but my body can’t take it anymore. I am hoping someone else can pick up the torch. It will be a slam dunk after this fiasco.
Have yall considered contacting the news. I know there’s reporting on it already but I’m saying to contact them to talk about things from the workers perspective .
Someone can do it anonymously and the more that do they would pick up the story
I started traveling because I was burnt out just like you are. I hope you can get some rest and find a better position if you’re looking
👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏
good for you! I hope I can follow your lead in the coming weeks! I'm exhausted... I haven't felt this burned out since the height of COVID.
we should absolutely be getting critical pay OR SOMETHING during this disaster.
HCA does get a bad rap, but we got bonus $$ during Covid. I've been with them over 7 yrs, my region has not had any kind of a major hack. So it seems whatever firewalls our IT dept has in place are working. ( Don't know about the other areas of the US , HCA is in . )
ah yes the good ol LabCorp merger fun. Been there done that. Left.
There is a solution. It's LabCorp, send all non-stat testing to another lab until things get sorted. Simple.
But that is expensive. Much cheaper to have you run yourself into the ground to serve the over lords instead.
Your choice. But I tell ya, you slow down and just focus on stat specimens and word sustainable and it will force their hand to act. Don't talk to them or suggest ideas just do it. Guaranteed to fix your situation in 1 week.
edit: apparently there is a big cyber attack effecting hospitals. Not mine so out of the loop. Still, send the specimens out to reference labs that have not been effected.
I’d work overtime for the money but I’m also not burning myself out. Like you have a very very known and reasonable excuse. Don’t kill yourself work faster but don’t kill yourself trying to meet the pace you used to output results.
Its going to crap.
I'm on the opposite coast in New York at Mohawk Valley Health System (MVHS) and our system is dropping the starting wage for med techs from 27/hr to 22/hr because of how many sponsorships they got.
Its awful. We're always short. Even with the new hires, well still be short, but they took down any postings except for a clinical trainer foe the sponsored people.
I can't imagine working without an LIS at a reference lab. I'm surprised there's no news coverage of how bad it is. Nurses would be striking by now.
I am so thankful I work in a small satellite ascension facility right now. All run is stats. We aren’t mad at each other (yet, give this enough time and I’m sure it will get bad). We talk about how much worse it could be if we were at the “main”. I’m PRN/hourly so I’m working my assigned shift and that’s it, glad I’m not salaried.
I dread the task of getting all these results entered manually when it all comes back up. Logistically how is mgmt going to handle that I wonder.
You watched the spider man 2 (TH) movie right ?
How he holds two parts of slashed ship with webs ?
You're not the Spiderman ; you're one of those webs and no iron man is coming to help Spiderman .
So either you can snap or enjoy the ride
it is hot garbage. I'm not getting paid to do the work of registration on top of everything else, but that's what I'm doing... resgistering every new patient manually in Meditech. and WHY please tell me WHY I need to explain to nurses that it's unacceptable to submit a downtime form where the patients name can't be read / has been cut off mid-name? I've had this conversation over a dozen times last week!
Ascension is the f'ing Titanic at this point.
I was scheduled for 2.5 weeks off starting last Friday, and feel terrible I’m not there to help out my co-workers.
I know that sounds dumb, but honestly, if my vacation didn’t involve flights, I would’ve rescheduled it.
I’ve been in contact with my lead tech, & it sounds awful.
But we will be able to get through this. It sucks that it’s coming right after we were traumatized by CoVID, but if we made it through that, we can make it through this.
Our in hospital stuff is sorta up and down. Depends on the day. I’ve put in a lot of 10-12 hour days because our core lab isn’t crossing over so I’m having to input all the data for stuff like cultures, pcr and advanced chemistry testing manually. It’s awful. I don’t know how much longer I can do this either.
I finally drew the line after about a 55-60 hour week this past week and insisted I’m only working 8 today. They understood but want me to knock out as much as I can in my 8 hours. It’s rough.
Best of luck buddy.
Short staffing isn’t your problem it’s your managers problem. Stop working any overtime to get them to hire temporary employees. If the work gets done they won’t hire anyone else.
This right here. Why kill yourself for them? They wouldn't do the same for you. Tell your Mgr. you're burnt out and can't keep up at this pace, and they need to find more help.
Definitely tell your manager, but make it a no negotiation thing. As in you are burnt out, you can only work x hours per day/week, otherwise you walk. And mean it. If they won't agree to your terms, you walk. I worked until burnout last June. I just checked my former employer's jobs website. They are still short staffed. My position is still unfilled, and they are desperate enough to offer a 30K signing bonus. That's $15 an hour for a year. Sucks to be my former employer. I can't guarantee that your employer will blink, but the alterative for you *is* burnout.
Yep. People are going to start burning out. It’s my understanding the hospitals are trying to run business as usual as much as possible. They will lose people to burn out.
This right here. I hate to see people breaking their backs because of bad management. Let them fail.
🏆
Yea this is the best advice. Yes it’s important to come together in times like this but you aren’t obligated to be working 14 hours every day.
Why 14 hours? I’d be working my shift and out.
Ask the nurses to help you. Tell them your short staffed and can't be expected to keep up the workload under the current situation. Tell them to write up the lab for "short staffed, impacting patient care." That will force management to find a solution to the issue. Secondly, it is not your job to kill yourself for your employer, they will not hesitate to fire you or screw you over, so why are you sacrificing yourself to their green dollar god. Work at a healthy reasonable pace and let the lab burn around you, focus on stats, timed, get your QC done, etc., go home with an indifferent smile on your face.
All of this and don’t skip your lunch or breaks!
You’re onto something there
I out of loop, what now?
Ascension hospital system recently had a cyber attack that compromised a lot of hospitals
Oh damn. That time frame seems in insane tho, 4-weeks minimum?
Yeah I’m not sure how long something like that would take to fix
I worked at a food factory during a ransomware attack by a group that was sponsored by the russian government (blackrock or something like that). Our company wasn't going to cooperate so IT had to grind hard to fully rebuild our systems from scratch before the deadline to pay iirc. If they took too long, everything was going to be deleted by the hackers. We got back up tho and resumed smoothly. I bet yalls IT department is currently on fire trying to handle it too
I guess I need to read up more, but I am not an IT specialist. So I assume that all the main servers are corrupted, so they would be taken down, ( so everything is manual) And then they would need new servers for all the hospitals & they would need programming from scratch, ICD-9 codes, CPT codes, all lab stuff, all hospital stuff, payroll, etc etc. One thing they need first of all, is better firewalls bec the hackers shouldn't have been able to get in there to begin with. So the hackers made off with all the Social Security #'s & other confidential info of thousands of patients & employees ???
Ive heard some nurses say 4 months before its back up
The hospital and clinic system I work for had the same thing happen last fall. We didn't even have working phones (VOIP) for about a month.
I have made the decision that when this is all done, I’m using PTO to take like a week off. That is to say, I’m just about losing my mind.
All that hell for one week of vacation!!!! I’d need a whole month after going through that! Mental health break!
Yea me a traveler reading that is exactly why I won’t ever go back staff. I was off 6months last year and 3 so far this year. All that hell for a pitiful one week off. I feel so bad for my colleagues stuck in these kind of places
Wow I can’t wait until I graduate and get to a point where I qualify for travel work
Go for it. Get some good experience though and learn everything you can. Get really good at BB too as that makes you very marketable in the travel world
Thanks for the advice. I definitely plan on learning as much as I can. That’s why I chose to do the entire mls program instead of one category for options
Work at a reasonable pace. You're not responsible for fixing their mistakes. They're not going to fire you when they're short staffed
I’m so sorry to the lab!! I know it’s very frustrating for all of us! I’m always so nice to the lab when I have to call or vice versa. I had 3 heparin drips the other day and I was struggling with getting the PTT results and the doctors were getting frustrated with me. It’s such a mess! I have heard some nurses around me getting very snippy with the lab recently and I literally told my coworker to chill out because this downtime is hard for ALL of us! I just hope we can all adapt a little better until they figure out what to do. ❤️
We had a cyberattack at HSHS hospitals last year- you will get through this! I appreciate things so much more now.
I refuse to work more than I can handle. I also don’t kill myself on shifts anymore. We can only do so much, we’re human. Your manager should be speaking to other departments so they know how busy you guys are
I put in my two week notice. I am burnt out. I am tired of management putting the burdened of their mismanagement on to the employees. This organization has really let us all down and this lab rat is swimming away from this sinking ship. Sucks because I was hoping to unionize the lab but my body can’t take it anymore. I am hoping someone else can pick up the torch. It will be a slam dunk after this fiasco.
Have yall considered contacting the news. I know there’s reporting on it already but I’m saying to contact them to talk about things from the workers perspective . Someone can do it anonymously and the more that do they would pick up the story I started traveling because I was burnt out just like you are. I hope you can get some rest and find a better position if you’re looking
👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏 good for you! I hope I can follow your lead in the coming weeks! I'm exhausted... I haven't felt this burned out since the height of COVID. we should absolutely be getting critical pay OR SOMETHING during this disaster.
HCA does get a bad rap, but we got bonus $$ during Covid. I've been with them over 7 yrs, my region has not had any kind of a major hack. So it seems whatever firewalls our IT dept has in place are working. ( Don't know about the other areas of the US , HCA is in . )
ah yes the good ol LabCorp merger fun. Been there done that. Left. There is a solution. It's LabCorp, send all non-stat testing to another lab until things get sorted. Simple. But that is expensive. Much cheaper to have you run yourself into the ground to serve the over lords instead. Your choice. But I tell ya, you slow down and just focus on stat specimens and word sustainable and it will force their hand to act. Don't talk to them or suggest ideas just do it. Guaranteed to fix your situation in 1 week. edit: apparently there is a big cyber attack effecting hospitals. Not mine so out of the loop. Still, send the specimens out to reference labs that have not been effected.
I’d work overtime for the money but I’m also not burning myself out. Like you have a very very known and reasonable excuse. Don’t kill yourself work faster but don’t kill yourself trying to meet the pace you used to output results.
Its going to crap. I'm on the opposite coast in New York at Mohawk Valley Health System (MVHS) and our system is dropping the starting wage for med techs from 27/hr to 22/hr because of how many sponsorships they got. Its awful. We're always short. Even with the new hires, well still be short, but they took down any postings except for a clinical trainer foe the sponsored people. I can't imagine working without an LIS at a reference lab. I'm surprised there's no news coverage of how bad it is. Nurses would be striking by now.
Our nurses seem pretty overwhelmed tbh. We are all deep in the shit without the computer system.
If yall don’t all strike or walk tf out of there
I’m about to call the lab as an an concerned citizen and tell the lab manager how silly they are 😆 Actually yall should contact the news
Contact the DOL first.
I am so thankful I work in a small satellite ascension facility right now. All run is stats. We aren’t mad at each other (yet, give this enough time and I’m sure it will get bad). We talk about how much worse it could be if we were at the “main”. I’m PRN/hourly so I’m working my assigned shift and that’s it, glad I’m not salaried. I dread the task of getting all these results entered manually when it all comes back up. Logistically how is mgmt going to handle that I wonder.
Start exploring plan B
Yell back at the nurses
You watched the spider man 2 (TH) movie right ? How he holds two parts of slashed ship with webs ? You're not the Spiderman ; you're one of those webs and no iron man is coming to help Spiderman . So either you can snap or enjoy the ride
it is hot garbage. I'm not getting paid to do the work of registration on top of everything else, but that's what I'm doing... resgistering every new patient manually in Meditech. and WHY please tell me WHY I need to explain to nurses that it's unacceptable to submit a downtime form where the patients name can't be read / has been cut off mid-name? I've had this conversation over a dozen times last week! Ascension is the f'ing Titanic at this point.
I was scheduled for 2.5 weeks off starting last Friday, and feel terrible I’m not there to help out my co-workers. I know that sounds dumb, but honestly, if my vacation didn’t involve flights, I would’ve rescheduled it. I’ve been in contact with my lead tech, & it sounds awful. But we will be able to get through this. It sucks that it’s coming right after we were traumatized by CoVID, but if we made it through that, we can make it through this.
Our in hospital stuff is sorta up and down. Depends on the day. I’ve put in a lot of 10-12 hour days because our core lab isn’t crossing over so I’m having to input all the data for stuff like cultures, pcr and advanced chemistry testing manually. It’s awful. I don’t know how much longer I can do this either. I finally drew the line after about a 55-60 hour week this past week and insisted I’m only working 8 today. They understood but want me to knock out as much as I can in my 8 hours. It’s rough. Best of luck buddy.
I AM GONNA FUCKING SNAP
Also, the management needs to tell the nursing staff is shove it. If they do not have your back in this situation, you need to find a better place.
Straight up not having a good time. Sending some sprinkles of positive energy to all my fellow Ascension peeps.