To break up the work of being a floor nurse in critical care, I opted to do relief work as both a charge nurse and a house supervisor. As I had already been a clinical supervisor and done relief work as a charge nurse, it didn’t significantly impact my resume. I mainly did it for a change of pace, and let’s be honest, it was easy work. The house supervisor position, on the other hand, was all about enhancing my resume and gaining a deeper understanding of my hospital’s operations.

As a relief charge nurse, my duties were pretty simple, mainly just keeping the ship from sinking. Most nurse managers have little expectations from their relief staff, which is a good thing because I frequently found that I was overseeing two floors because they were short-staffed that often. Remember how I said they never truly recovered from the firing of all the clinical supervisors? Well, now you have anecdotal evidence of my claim. Our primary responsibilities included ensuring patient safety and preventing nurses from making lethal mistakes. Boy, we certainly do lower the bar, don’t we? I also set up the schedule for the day team. Yep, that is it.

House Supervisor work was a bit more demanding. The most significant task I had was to keep patients moving from the ER to their appropriate units, and keeping the doctors from killing each other, LOL You would be surprised how outspoken surgeons can become when it involves surgery slots in the ORs. Surgeons often push other doctors out of their OR slots to complete their work earlier. They always wanted me to do their dirty work. But I was having none of it. I made them slug it out amongst themselves. I told them that I wouldn’t get involved in their fights. I was also the chief bottle washer, so to speak, which means I did anything that was needed to keep the hospital running at night. This meant that I ran around the hospital getting supplies for the various units, bringing food for patients, since the cafeteria closed at 7 pm, and other glamorous duties like that. I was also responsible for replenishing crash carts that were used from codes on the floors. I started hard to get IVs on the nursing floors and responded to all codes throughout the hospital. I was responsible for any direct admits and transfers that took place at night. My final job was to complete all nursing staffing for the day shift on the floors and in the ER. By the end of the shift, I think I had walked a thousand miles.

It sounds worse than it was. Many nights went pretty smoothly, but the problem arose when I had no beds available on the floors, and I had to wait for discharges. This became a problem, especially when the ER was full. Oh, by the way, I had to coordinate housekeeping and make sure they were cleaning the appropriate rooms first.

I usually picked up about ten or so shifts a year doing house supervisor work…that is, until the CNO refused to guarantee me my days. When I started the job, I told him that he had to ensure he wouldn’t cut my shifts later in the week. That is, if I worked three days on the floor and one extra day as the supervisor, I would be guaranteed four days. He readily agreed to my terms as they were reasonable. However, after five years of following his agreement, he changed his mind and started cutting my shifts. After being screwed a couple of weeks, I stopped doing relief work not only for the house supervisor but also for the relief charge nurse. Boy, I can tell you that they were not happy with me. He refused to change his mind, and I stood firm. So that ended my relief career. It took them a year before they were finally able to find a permanent replacement for me. You would have thought that the CNO would have given in, but he was just too pigheaded to admit that he was in the wrong. He is retired now, so I can use whatever terms I want to describe him. You may wonder why I was being so stubborn. Well, the answer was that I had to work five and even six days a week to get my 36 hours because they would send me home to save hours. If you have ever worked nights, you will know how much of a pain that is. During the day, you can always do something without it significantly affecting your sleep. What a pain when you slept the whole day to get cancelled at the last minute or sent home a couple of hours after you went into work because the census was too low. Now you are finally getting the picture.

Although I mentioned this individual in my first book, I also want to bring him up again in this one. He is just that special. He was instrumental in my getting my current position of employment, for which I will be eternally grateful. Hopefully, I can repay him in some way in the future. His name was Sal, and he was a mentor of mine. He oriented me to the house supervisor position. This man is also a true professional in every sense of the word. I have known him for close to ten years. During this time, I have never seen him lose his temper or raise his voice. He has always been helpful and gives fantastic advice. It has been an honor working with him all these years, and he will be sorely missed.