"I'm not floating."

[Morainey]

Yup. Unfortunately, sometimes in the facility we have need of nurses on other floors and hey, did you really want to be called off and lose more time? Trust me, the supervisor and I put thought into who gets floated - most importantly, if it's the person's turn to float, if they are a good fit for that particular specialty floor, do they have experience in that specialty, and so on.

I'm really tired of having my head bitten off when the next shift comes in and says "I'm not ******* floating" and then calls the supervisor to get the same explanation I give them, and they ALWAYS end up huffing off to their float floor with a monstrous attitude a half an hour after their shift started.

Is it like this everywhere? I feel like my unit's RNs have a bad reputation for floating because they make such a stink about it and it's so obvious they don't want to float. In the interest of full disclosure, I used to get really upset about floating as a new grad, but I made an attitude adjustment once I realized it sets a tone for your whole shift when you show up to your float floor with a miserable attitude.

[SwansonRN]

I have nightmares about floating. For us we cycle through our large ICU staff in floating to our step down. It's just so drastically different than the ICU. The patients are usually well enough to eat, and talk, and need the bed pan/ice chips/this+that+everything every 5 minutes and there are 3 of them instead of 2. That plus the rapid turnover rate means a day of constant moving. I give so much credit to the step down nurses who work there full time. Give me a patient on 3 pressors and a ventilator, please. I can't deal.

[springsong]

Every nurse isnot comfortable of floating to another floor. But it is not fair that the samepeople will be floating all the time. What our unit is doing is to have a floatrecord to know who the last nurse that floated to another unit. And I think itis just fair to do that.

[wooh, BSN, RN]

I don't mind floating IF IT IS FAIR.

At my previous job, I floated all the time to whatever unit whenever. Send me to ICU. Send me to ED. Send me to mother/baby. But it got really old that those units NEVER would float to us, no matter how short we were.

So when they started asking for volunteers to staff the ICU where I work now, oh heck no. They don't help us, why on earth should we help them? If I wanted to work ICU, I would work in the ICU.

But if it's to another floor, I'll take it happily. Always have a better shift than I would have had on my own floor. And they help us, we help them. It's fair.

[MatrixRn]

Some floors were so horrible to work on at one hospital, that they were staffed mainly by floating staff from a "good" floor

that was deliberately overstaffed for that reason.

Maybe improving conditions and staffing would be in order.

This is sad and speaks to upper leadership who is not willing to discipline or train a poor manager.

[Nurse Kyles, BSN, RN]

I am surprised there is so much floating! At my hospital we have a no float policy for RNs (we don't have LPNs). No nurses are ever floated. I have heard on one occasion of a nurse requsting to float since their unit had low census, and he had been put on call a bunch. I work in a PCU and occasionally we will get called to go to CCU to take PCU overflows. That is really just a change of scenery, since our unit is out of beds. The aids do get floated, which I don't think they really like. They are troopers and don't complain much. We keep track of who was floated in our date log.

[BlueDevil,DNP, DNP, RN]

In my day they just fired people who refused. It's called insubordination. The uncooperative slugs were sent home and never heard from again. TPTB only had to do that once or twice before word got out and the rest of us shut up and went where we were told to go. No, we didn't like it, but the way things is the way things are. When you work for someone else, you generally have follow instructions, or else risk no longer working there. Choices- we all got em.

[JBudd, MSN]

Our hospital mandates floating "down", the unit nurses havestried to refuse as they hadn't worked and/or been oriented to medsurg floors. We were told a nurse could always move to a lower level of care, but they floor nurses weren't sent to ICU or CCU because it was a higher level of care. I don't care if rehab is called a "lower level", it is totally its own specialty!

Fortunately, ED staff never get floated out, we are understaffed to begin with and have to have a certain minimum available for (you guessed it) emergencies. If we get floats into the ED, it is only for the holding pts, and the nurses have access to floor charting on the computer.

[Race Mom, ASN, RN]

I am one who hates to float! I was a L&D RN and would be required to float throughout the hospital units. Floats always got dumped on, ALWAYS. That is the main reason L&D hated to float. I would go to ICU and they would tell me that I needed to read the cardiac strips and chart on them hourly. Hmmm. Sure, I learned it in NS but that was awhile ago. One RN (who was nice) told me that I'm an RN and should be expected to work ICU and read strips. I asked her when the last time was that she came down to help L&D when we were overburdened and needed extra hands. Her reply..."I don't know how to read the monitors". R I G H T!

I was floated to the ER and they acted like they were doing me a favor. Meanwhile, I was running my butt off and ALL of the staff were gathered around (should say lounging around) a computer monitor looking at Craigslist. At that point, I told them I was leaving to return to my unit and I was out of there. I was fuming mad! (Didn't have a pt. load, just tasking) Floating RN's to units they are not versed in puts pts at risk IMHO.

[Bortaz, MSN, RN]

Trust me, the supervisor and I put thought into who gets floated - most importantly, if it's the person's turn to float, if they are a good fit for that particular specialty floor, do they have experience in that specialty, and so on.

I don't like to float. I'm a highly specialized nurse, and there is no other unit remotely similar to my home unit.

However, if it's my turn, I suck it up and go. But, there's a problem with that at my place of employment. You say "trust me, we're doing it fairly" as if that's the case everywhere and every time. Here, they do NOT do it fairly...floating is used to punish, floating of their friends is not done, we have some people have to float 3 times in a pay period while others float not once. We have agency nurses working on our unit, while unit staff nurses are floated out.

I can assure you, many of the nurses that are getting on your nerves about floating have worked in ****-holes like mine, and have been treated poorly in regards to floating policy. If it's happening enough for you to get angry and come here to make a thread, I GUARANTEE your activities are not being seen, by floor nurses, as being as fair and equal as you see them.

[Bortaz, MSN, RN]

Give me a patient on 3 pressors and a ventilator, please. I can't deal.

I say it all the time. I want all my patients to be sedated, intubated, NPO orphans weighing less than 3 kilos.

[NicuGal, MSN, RN]

We used to have to float all over the hospital....the adult ICU's would be horrified when one of us NICU nurses would show up, just as horrified as us! We were more of a burden than help, that is for sure! At least now our hospital wiser up and we only float med-surg to med-surg, Adult ICU to adult and maternal child to maternal child, L/D is closed.

But when they come in and pitch a fit and then huff off, they are just setting themselves up for a bad day. They still do it when we have to go to the nursery...really? We keep a log of who floated last and your new date goes in. When it is your turn, it is your turn.

[dirtyhippiegirl, BSN, RN]

We float ICU to ICU and I don't mind floating to some units but...I work on a mixed acuity burn unit and can go weeks without caring for a ventilated patient, months without seeing a pressor. :/

I always try to go out of my way to be nice/informative/helpful with the floats we get. It pays off. I've floated to units and had an instant friend to show me the ropes in the nurse who remembered when I helped them out on our unit.