I work in a nursing leadership role and recently had a situation with an employee that has left me feeling pretty uneasy. I’m curious how other managers or healthcare leaders would handle this. About a month ago, I had to mandate a nurse to stay for four hours of overtime to ensure adequate staffing. I asked for volunteers first, but nobody was willing to stay. It was a busy shift, and I understood why people didn’t want the overtime, but we still needed coverage for staffing and patient-safety reasons. I followed the applicable mandate process, and this employee was selected because he hadn’t been mandated in over a year. He was understandably upset. During the interaction, he made comments about potentially calling in sick the following day to “screw over management.” I tried to give him some grace because I recognized that he was frustrated, and I offered him an adjustment, which he accepted. Another employee then offered to stay in his place, but he declined that offer and said he would take the mandate after all. At no point during the interaction did he tell me he had childcare issues or other commitments the following day. During the same shift, I also went to help in the department. I offered to do some triage re-assessments. I took vitals on the patients I was directed to assess and helped with pain medication within my role. I had other responsibilities as the hospital supervisor, so I wasn’t able to stay and work in the department for my entire shift. Almost a month later, I learned that this employee had gone to the department manager and was apparently very upset about the mandate. He reportedly raised the childcare and other commitments and complained about my involvement in the department. Specifically, he apparently told the manager that I had gone down, joked around with the CRN, and then left without doing any vitals. This is particularly frustrating because I did take vitals on the patients I was asked to assess. (And I was laughing with the CRN and the patient because the nurse I was helping told me to viral a patient the crn was discharging - and the patient made a comment about the discharge vitals being extra good service) HR subsequently contacted me because he is planning to file a union grievance. I explained what had happened, including the fact that I had sought volunteers, followed the mandate process, offered an adjustment, and that another employee had offered to replace him, which he declined. I also spoke with the department manager, who said she had suspected that the childcare and other commitments hadn’t been communicated to me. She also mentioned that she felt this employee seemed to have a particular issue with me. I’ve noticed that he often isn’t particularly polite or friendly toward me, so I have wondered the same thing. I’m not especially worried about the potential grievance because I believe I followed the process and had legitimate staffing and patient-safety reasons for the decision. What bothers me more is that he waited nearly a month to raise the issue and seems to be presenting the situation in a way that leaves out important context. The allegation about me joking around and leaving without helping also feels unfair because it doesn’t reflect what actually happened. I also regret not documenting some of his comments at the time because I was trying to de-escalate the situation and give him grace. Going forward, I’ll be documenting significant interactions more carefully. My question is: Am I reading too much into this, or is it reasonable to feel like there might be something calculated or retaliatory going on? How do you protect yourself professionally when you start feeling like an employee might be looking for reasons to get you in trouble, without becoming suspicious of everyone or letting it affect how you manage? I’ve just been feeling a lot of anxiety over this and I don’t know why - I’ve had angry staff before but for some reason this feels different.   submitted by   /u/nightshift1223 [link]   [comments]