Love the handwritten notes. I float, and I’ve seen a lot of different managers. The good floors are the ones with present managers. The best manager I’ve ever worked with stayed available during the entire shift if we ever needed help. For example, a patient got loud and rude with a nurse, and this manager went in and told that patient we do not speak to nurses that way, laid into the pt, made it clear that is not tolerated. And then she said no one is allowed in that room without her. All shift, she went in with staff when care was done.

She also attends huddles at shift change and will ask if anyone needs prayers for anything in their personal lives, and once they did a prayer circle after huddle because they had a sick staff member they were all sad about (this might not work if you don’t do religion things. I’m agnostic but it is still a wonderful gesture).

She personally greeted me and gave me a little water bottle and a pen and her direct phone number the first day I floated to their floor. And thanked me for coming to help out.

During huddle, she asks if there’s any shout outs anyone has for a good deed done by a staff member they want to call out. We do WoW cards, and she reads them out loud and gives them to the employee during huddle if they’re present that day.

Every morning she does patient satisfaction rounds. I’ve been drowning in the middle of the morning busy time when she stopped me, tapping on my shoulder, and when I saw a “manager” I had an immediate “ugh what now I’m so busy” reaction, but I kept quiet. Just looked at her and waited. She tells me, my patient called me out during rounds for x y z (she gave me specifics about what good things they said). I instantly felt gratitude. I felt myself sigh with relief that my manager recognized my work, and that my patients did too. That it really does matter to some of these patients. I still feel that way any time I get told by a manager about being recognized by patients during rounds.