Narrator: Darla, the Director in charge of Women’s and Children’s Services (L&D, Post-Partum, Nursery, NICU, Pediatrics, and Women’s Abdominal Surgeries/Med/Surg) is newly appointed to this role and was chosen from the staff, even though she was not a charge nurse and did not have any additional training or qualifications. It is important to note that she is friends with the Chief Nursing Officer of the hospital and did not go through the traditional vetting via peer interview and so on. She has an extensive history of making trouble amongst her co-workers, and the unit as a whole seems to be shocked about her promotion.
You observe the following conversations while reviewing charts at shift change.
Arlette: Have you read your email?
Rahul: No…I thought we weren’t supposed to when we were off the clock. Girl, I was on vacation and not worried about this place at all! Why? What’s happened since I’ve been gone? Two weeks isn’t that long.
Arlette: Well, for starters, we are now obligated to check our emails once daily, even on our days off.
Rahul: What! I assume they’ll be paying us for that! How are we supposed to report working for five minutes to check emails when we aren’t here?
Arlette: From what I understand, there is no plan to pay us for that time as it’s considered "part of our duty" now. But get this, it’s just the tip of the iceberg. We have had at least ten changes over the past three shifts I have worked.
Rahul: Who is making all of these changes and why? I thought we were a fairly well-oiled machine.
Arlette: I can’t believe no one called you! They went and appointed Darla as our new director! You know what they say here, if you’re unable to do your job correctly, we’ll just promote you! And better yet, we weren’t even asked what we thought about her. She went through no peer interview process or anything! You know we are never told why changes are made.