Quiet week

In the life of management, a quiet week is like the Holy Grail.  The ability to get the piles of work on your desk cleared off.  The ability to take your time making rounds on the unit.  The ability do some coaching with my staff.
This has been that week for me.  I have plowed through paperwork that has been piling up.  I have done so much this week that I can see my desk again, its not just an endless pile of papers.  As I was going though them, I found that more than half of the papers on my desk were outdated, had a new revision or had been address through emails and I could just trash them.

The best part was that I had time to sit down with a handful of my staff and find out where they are in their lives and careers.  I found out a couple of them were looking to transfer to either the ED or ICU and were really trying to figure how to do that or if they were even ready.  I was able to tell one she was definitely ready to go and would do great and another I told her that she may want to stick around in acute care for a few more months, and was able to give her some ideas on what she could do to prepare herself.  I was also able to tell both of them what they can expect when they make that move, and how to avoid making the mistakes I saw countless nurses make that ultimately caused them to fail in critical care.

But, as an ED nurse and a manager, I am just waiting for the quietness to end and the bomb to drop.  Staffing problems, emergency FMLA, an angry family…..it’s bound to happen before Friday at 1700.

I’ll just enjoy it while it is here and pray that it never ends.