[loriab21]

Where I work, in OB/L&D/Nursery, we are getting floated to other units, of which we have not had any orientation and expected to take a patient load. If my home unit gets busy, like last night, they actually said that they would send our patients to another hospital because now we were understaffed. This makes absolutely no sense to any of us. But when we are busting at the seams, we do not get any help. They told us to "suck it up and deal with it". We did. we sent patients 75-350 miles from our hosptial to a place were they were better staffed. We have voiced our concerns, but it seems like no one listens. Any ideas?

[kadokin]

Originally Posted by loriab21

Where I work, in OB/L&D/Nursery, we are getting floated to other units, of which we have not had any orientation and expected to take a patient load. If my home unit gets busy, like last night, they actually said that they would send our patients to another hospital because now we were understaffed. This makes absolutely no sense to any of us. But when we are busting at the seams, we do not get any help. They told us to "suck it up and deal with it". We did. we sent patients 75-350 miles from our hosptial to a place were they were better staffed. We have voiced our concerns, but it seems like no one listens. Any ideas?

Yeah, give the person who dreamed this up a breathalyzer sometime.

[Harleygirl]

I work at a rural hospital and you can have up to 3 "modalities", meaning you train to be able to float to different departments, psych, med surg, OB, ICU, outpatient clinics, etc. They offer a pretty nice hourly compensation to be a "float" nurse, no matter if you work in your home department or where you float to. Gives you a pretty decent wage if you are a modality nurse that works nights!!

[Zee_RN]

As an ICU nurse, I can be floated to any of our telemetry floors or the Cardiovascular ICU. I hate it. I'd rather take the decrease in pay, not that I can afford it; I just hate floating that much. When you're accustomed to taking care of 2 high-acuity patients with a 30-minute face-to-face report and then being given 5 or 6 tele patients (with different charting requirements) and rapid-fire taped report, it's very discomfiting. You can't find supplies. Everyone else is running around like chickens and you get rolled eyes when you can't find a 10-cc syringe. The Pyxis is two hallways away. I admire Tele nurses for the amount of work they do; I don't want that their job!

CVU pulls are the closest to "home." The unit is structured just like our ICU, with 10 beds instead of our 20. Their charting is different, but I can deal with it with only one or two patients to figure it out on.

They're talking about relieving the 15-year seniority nurses from floating and I think that's great -- unless it means I get pulled more! I know it sounds like I'm talking out of both sides of my mouth but ... well, that's how it. 15 years' seniority certainly deserves the relief. But I don't want to pick up that slack; I will certainly find a new job if I have to float more. Just my personal pet peeve. I know it sounds double-sided but ... I just can't stand it! (And, of course, I think it's my turn tonight; going in 11-7.)

[MandyInMS]

Had problems with floating a while back..a supervisor was determined that everyone was to float to ER.. my hats off to ER nurses, but I am NOT one of them..lol...there was no training or orientation prior to being floated there...some of the other nurses who gave in to her pressure described it as "sink or swim", being thrown to the wolves and being expected to perform as an experienced ER nurse...I cont. to refuse to go stating the obvious fact of no training,ect...it's a WHOLE diff way of nursing in the er...now mind you I have floated to numerous other areas that I felt comfortable/competent(sp?) with, so I'm NOT totally inflexable...and after seeing several other coworkers leave work in tears after being forced to float I knew "sticking to my guns" was the right thing to do. Sorry but I will NEVER be put in a position where my liscense or patient care is compromised....the end

[RN34TX]

And my hats off to Burn nurses.
I have nothing but the utmost respect for them, but I am NOT one of them.

My hospital considers the burn unit (BICU) a part of the "critical care" family, so we are required to float there at times.
The staff is wonderful and accomodating as much as possible to those of us floating from other ICU's. Most of the time they give me MICU or SICU overflow patients but sometimes the entire unit is all real burn patients so I have to take them.

This is where I think that the whole "a nurse is a nurse" management mentality is completely out of hand.
Again, the staff never throws me to the wolves and is always there to help with "burn specific" issues, but........

If any of you had a family member or yourself suffer severe burns, would you want or expect anything less than an experienced burn nurse taking care of you or your family?
IMHO, burn nursing is a whole world of a specialty in and of itself, and I just don't see substituting SICU/MICU/CVICU or whatever ICU nurses as being an acceptable solution.

Any other nurses have to float to the burn unit, and if so, how do you feel about it?

[Zee_RN]

(And I did float last night, lol...to the CVU so it wasn't too bad. And now I'm at the bottom of the list to float again, thank goodness.)

[sjrn85]

ITA w/ fergus; we would never expect this of physicians. It's totally inappropriate to expect that a nurse can float to any unit and function.

And I have to wonder at nurses who feel they can float anywhere, anytime. No one can be that knowledgeable in every area. "Jack of all trades, master of none," so to speak.

[imenid37]

This is getting to be a make or break for me. I work ob in a small hospital. Our pt's are great for the most part. We do L/D, Nsy, GYN, and PP. We also do PACU for ob pt's. Now we get floated to Med-Surg all of the time. I really hate it. In the past, we were expected to function as a nursing assistant. Not really what I want to do, but it was o.k. w/ me. Now they are thinking we can do assessments and meds. I don't feel comfortable w/ this at all. We usually don't get a good report and I don't want to make a mistake or injure my back (almost happened last week) lugging around someone on med-surg. If my mom or dad was a pt., I'd want someone caring for them who knew what she/he was doing, not some like me. I feel that I am a very experienced and well-qualified Ob nurse, but I can't be everything. I'd never give a med-surg nurse a labour pt. or an antenatal on mag sulfate if she/he were floated to my unit. It is one thing to be a helper, but quite another to take on the responsibility of doing something quite unfamiliar to me. I know the med-surg nurses are overworked, but I did not create that situation. We have one med-surg manager in our hospital who believes his unit is well-staffed. He is totally clueless. Those nurses on that unit are stressed to the max and have way too many pt's. They run all night long. The ob nurses are pulled to this floor frequently. Almost everyone of their pt's. are confused and incontinent. The pt. load is insane. Probably, in great part due to their work environment, many of the nurses can be very unpleasant. I refuse to be bullied by someone into doing something like handing out a team of meds, which I am not really qualified to do. As I told one very nasty RN one night if I make a mistake, It won't help you, me or most of all the pts. I have heard on more than one occasion form seminars that I have attended on legal issues, that one should only do very basic "Fundamentals of Nursing" type tasks on an unfamiliar unit. Why haven't managers and supervisors heard the same things? I guess they don't listen to that part. IMHO, floating and giving a nurse "an assignment" on an unfamiliar fooor is doing more harm than good. Sure if legally, you must have x# of rn's on a unit, then pulling solves that on paper. You may as well give an orthopedic pt. to Big Bird if you're going to give him/her to me. If all of this pulling continues, I will be looking for another job soon, esp. if the expectations of what we are to do on these units increases.

[spidermonkey]

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