[RNKittyKat]

Thank you all for your insightful replies. My unit is a general adult unit and we have a couple of TBI patients too. Although an acute facility, these patients have been here for months. They are total care. They don't meet the criteria for the geri unit r/t age. We have brittle diabetics with skin care issues, COPDers, a couple of end-stage kidney patients, a CHFer and those with multi-system organ involvement. There are those on isolation precautions, etc. There's no way to get around it, these patients need a lot of medical care in addition to their psych care.

Unfortunately, all this medical care takes time, particularly the skin care issues. We are not staffed for this. As the acuity goes up, there's less time to pay attention to all the issues these patients present with. There's just enough time in a nurse's 8-hour shift to do med passes, chart and do some 1:1s and little more. I am going to have to be bold at some point here and speak up for staffing concerns, a dangerous thing for a newbie. We're all thinking it but no one wants to bring it up to management.

[RN007]

Originally Posted by aloevera

atomic 1976- if you want to move to the Southeast on the coast, I would highly recomment my hospital. We do minimal medical care, basic stuff such as diabetic pts, once in a while a foley (rare), once in a blue moon dressing change (rare) and our LPN's (med nurses) generally take care of that....the RNs are charge on the unit and address pshyciatric issues for the majority of the time...we actually are hiring at present, let me know if you want name of hosp., town, etc.

I'm not looking to move but would still like to know where you are ....