[Angie O'Plasty, RN]

Do you feel you have safe staffing ratios at your facility?

[aloevera]

oh my heavens, no....not all the time....we should have 2-3 RN's and 2 LPN's (med nurses) on my unit of usually 35-48 pts. There has been many a time that we only have one RN. That is outragous !!!
One day we had 3 RN's for 45, the next day only one !!!! We can't keep staff, we are always complaining to adm. about low staffing. When one calls out, we can't even get the Supervisor to help on the floor...So, emphatically NO, we do not have adequate staffing....

[MeghanRN]

Hmm...

Yes.

our staffing ratio on IMU pedi is 2-3pts/RN.

However, I do not feel that we have adequate staff to cover all of the patients, and usually end up with the charge RN taking patients.

Nor do other units that we float to have adequate staffing..

So I guess thats my biggest issue.

[NursingAgainstdaOdds]

On days I'm assigned medical, I have 7 acutely ill patients. I know this is not the worst ratio, I've certainly heard worse, but I can say with certainty that it is not safe. When I'm telemetry (which is most of the time), I have 6, and that is also excessive. Particularly considering we don't have telemetry techs, the RN does all her own monitoring, in addition to the usual.

[advocateforsafety]

Has any one ever noticed how when a JACHO survey or state goverment inspection is taking place that staffing is always wonderful. Also have you ever looked at the schedule and noticed that day when you are very under staffed three weeks from now but nothing gets doen until the day before. The administrations have options just not inexpensive options so they choose to have poor staffing and our patients pay the price. I have seen patient falls and even patient codes that I believed would have been avoided had staffing been proper.

My vote is NO-NO-NO-NO-NO-NO-NO-NO- NO

[aloevera]

advocateforsafety------that is the only time that I see nurses in administration actually on the floor !!!!! and always, have extra staff.....yes, amazing, isn't it?????

[NICUgirl77]

We have great ratios in the NICU i work in. I have never had more than 3 babies and will often have only 1 if they are really critical. We also always have a "resource" nurse who doens't have a patient assignment and just helps out around unit. If we get too busy he/she will take on an assignment.

[janfrn]

Because of the acuity of our patient population we should always have more nurses than patients, but lately that rarely happens. We also have been making room for more patients than our unit has beds for by following what our health region is calling the "full capacity protocol". This means that we put two patients into a single room. It seems like the only isolation patients who are ever really isolated these days are the ones with significant organisms. It's nuts.

[tntrn]

In our Birth Center, we are usually okay. But the med-surg areas of our facility are horrible. And to make it worse, they use Birth Center nurses (some of us haven't seen MS since nursing school 30 years ago) as a float pool. The very reason I didn't even for a micro second consider my own place of employment when my DH had to have prostate surgery. No way, no how, not happening. As it was, the hospital we did use had wonderful ratios. Never did our nurse have more than 5 patients. Not rooms, patients. AND they had aides to help. It was heaven in comparison to the med surg floors where I work.

[aloevera]

those poor birth center nurses.....that would be like trying to float me (a psych nurse) to a med-surg floor....I wouldn't do it !!!!!