Being Fired

I have to admit I was not sure if I would share these stories but I feel as a leader we are always faced with the possibility that our performance does not meet or match what a company may expect from us. First I want to share my encounters with being fired. Yes I am admitting it and hope that I learned and have grown from them. I was actually terminated twice in my 40 year career. They were about 20 years apart.

The first time that I was fired I was a director of nursing in a small nursing home. I had worked there for 3 years. The company I worked for had 5 facilities. During that time I had developed a good team and had good results for surveys. This was just as OBRA was coming into play. During this time I worked for 3 different administrators. I had  what I thought was a good relationship with the owners. I was actually sent to some of their other facilities. In 1 capacity I did the CPR training for our other facilities and I also covered as  the director of nursing. Shortly after the third administrator started he came to me and said something like I have evaluated your services and we are going to let you go. He asked if he could pull my car up and got me a box for my things. Being a small facility I had to go by everyone and told one of my nurses I was leaving and wouldn't be back. She looked at me and said stop pulling my leg. I told her I wasn't and then broke down and cried. I left quickly and quietly and never looked back. I never was quite sure what happened but after a bit of searching I found work as a part time supervisor in a larger facility with a larger company. I was always honest about what had happened.

The second time I was terminated was less than 2 years ago. I had been doing independent contract work for over 1 year and loved it. Unfortunately my husband developed colon cancer and I had to find work that offered insurance. I became the administrator in a larger facility with a large corporate organization. During my time there I had a complaint survey almost monthly related to a disgruntled resident. I had 4 different regional directors. Was sent to help with yet another problem facility to help with their follow up survey. My building was census challenged therefore financially challenged. The last regional I had brought on a great regional nurse as well. I really felt like we were going to finally start seeing improvement. I had to fire several nurses for poor performance during this time but felt we had finally started to turn the corner. During the last few weeks I was employed I worked 10-12 hours per day 5-7 days per week and was starting to feel beat down a bit.

I remember the night before I was fired I felt like I got a second wind and had written up a plan and assignments to go over with my team. When I arrived that morning I asked the corporate nurse if she minded if I met with my team alone and she told me no. I guess I should have figured something was up. I then did my morning meeting and talked about goals and assignments. Again I should have figured something was up they were too quiet. I don't think they all knew but obviously some did. After the meeting I had someone to see me. The regional said they needed to talk to me and I asked if it could wait till I met with the people waiting on me and they said yes.

I met with my guests and then invited the regionals into my office. The regional vice presidents gave me a piece of paper to read. This paper said that I had basically caused the facility to loose money and  failed to improve census and clear survey issues. I was told I could sign the paper or write up my resignation. They told me if I did that they would pay me my earned vacation days. Of course I wrote a resignation.

My parting was a little bit funny to me. They asked someone to get me a box for my stuff and they brought a giant box. I had driven my little car so loading it I knew was going to be a challenge. I stuffed everything in the box. The regional said he would carry it and did. I know it was super heavy and my car was so small. He managed to get it in the car after a little bit of a struggle.
Well that is how I ended up doing what I am now as a floating administrator and director of nursing for problem buildings.

Here is the irony for those 2 situations. The first building I was fired from became one of my facilities as a regional vice president and regional nurse. The second building I was fired from was where I was working when at that time a different company sent me to school to get my administrators license and paid 100% of my tuition. If I learned anything from this it was to never burn a bridge. I never did or will speak badly of either of those facilities. Every thing happens for a reason.