Staff meetings

I've been spending a lot of time at the Hospital this week. It seems that even though I work weekends and Monday nights, mandatory meetings and training sessions seem to pop up. Today I have to go to training on SBAR, as I've been identified as one of the superusers. Basically, me and a few others will go to training then we will train everyone else on the unit. It's not supposed to take too long, but it wasn't until Saturday that I was told about it and the training is only this week. But, I think using SBAR as a way to give report to physicians and in any patient handout will be a good thing. More on SBAR after my training. Yesterday I had to go to our monthly staff meeting. Staff meetings are always on Wednesday and that makes it very difficult for me to get to. Reason being is Husband has to be at work at 6:00 a.m on Wednesdays for inventory, so I can't ever work Tuesday nights. We use daycare 2 days a week and I need them for the days after I've worked overnight. I've been lucky as my mom is usually able to come up and watch the kids so I can go, but it's an hour drive for her. I'm sure she doesn't mind most of the time because she gets to see the kids, but it would be nice to have someone closer. I did get some answers on the changes coming to weekend option, and as I suspected, some of what I had heard wasn't true. Right now, I have to work 50 out of 52 weekends a year. Until now, no one cared if you were sick over a weekend, you still got to take your 2 weekends of vacation, but I guess really, it should be counting as one of the 2 weekends. Starting next year, they will be keeping better track of people's weekends. They will give us 3 weekends off a year, but those 3 weekends will include vacation, sick time and if we get someone to work for us. So, lets say I take a vacation weekend in May, and then I'm sick over a weekend in July, I will only have 1 weekend left to take off. The day during the week right now is paid at time and a half and no PTO is earned, but next year it will be regular pay, but I'll get PTO. Flexing doesn't count against my 3 weekends off because it's a staffing decision. We are just flexed last unless we offer to flex so as not to tax our PTO bank. So I'm pretty happy with all of that. I won't bring home as much with my extra day at regular pay, but I'll get PTO. That way should I need surgery, or get really sick, I'm not screwed. I also found out that there was a HIPPAA violation on our unit and a job was lost. I'm not entirely sure what happened, or even who it was, but it's a little sad, and makes me a little anxious about this blog. Everything I write on here is basically a composite of multiple situations that have been changed so that I am giving a sample story, but not of one actual patient. But, even with that said, it's a bit unsettling. HIPPAA is a very serious thing and I make sure without a doubt that no one could read my stories and say "Hey, that's me she's talking about".