Does Anyone Else NEVER get downstaffed?

Editorial Team / Admin · Oct 19, 2013

Cardiac OR. For us, it's either feast or gorge. No famine. The only time we get the opportunity for time off is if we've got 2 of our 4 surgeons off. Then, we're fighting over who gets to be off. And even then it's not a guarantee- those 2 surgeons can do 4 heart surgeries in a single day- each one doing one in the morning, the non-office doc doing a second right away, and the office doc in the office between cases.

SwansonRN · Oct 19, 2013

We have random periods of low census, but they never seem to last longer than a day or so. I have only been cancelled once...and then got called in 4hr later to pick up an admission. Especially now that it's fall, we'll be bursting at the seams for a while!

0.adamantite · Oct 19, 2013

Yes we will occasionally go down a nurse mid-shift. I HATE it, because since I'm low seniority it's usually never me. So then I have to absorb some unfamiliar patients or get my assignment re-arranged.

MunoRN, RN · Oct 19, 2013

Low census is very rare at my facility in all units, when there is an opportunity for someone to get called off the Nurses fight over it (they fight to get called off).

Caffeine_IV · Oct 19, 2013

At my old job I was downstaffed once in the last 2 years of working there. Current job, it has been 4 months.

OCRN3 · Oct 19, 2013

I worked at a hospital that flexed during summers on a med surg unit. They would even close our unit and float the nurses. It seems to happen once a year for few weeks. Up until that point people fight over having a low census and wanting to get flexed. It is also a scary Tim, after a few weeks some nurses don't have enough PTO to cover and then we scramble for shifts.

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Meriwhen, ASN, BSN, MSN, RN · Oct 19, 2013

It happened at my last job because they always tried to keep the census at full capacity and were short on staff. I was called off twice in two years' there. The first time, I had called in to cancel myself due to a sick child, and staffing told me they were just about to call to cancel me. The second time they called me off, they called me back three hours later to ask if I could come in after all. Lucky for them, I had went back to bed while wearing my scrubs, so I told them that since I was already dressed for it, I'd come in.

kcochrane · Oct 19, 2013

I think it depends on the area. In Rochester, NY there just isnt enough beds for everyone. Always full when I worked at the hospital. Maybe holidays we got slow and we flexed (vacation given) according to senority....but everyone wanted to be flexed.

dirtyhippiegirl, BSN, RN · Oct 20, 2013

We definitely don't get cancelled a lot. Maybe once every six months? I haven't been cancelled since early May and before that, the last time I was cancelled was on Thanksgiving. We're a fairly small unit with high turnover (burn unit) and thus tight staffing much of the time.

Our burn census has actually been incredibly low recently. But we're first hit for plastics, second hit for PICU or peds if they're full and with the way our unit is set up --- we're expected to take ANY overflow. M/S, tele, or ICU. We're also expected to staff PICU if they're short although there are a few other float RNs/RNs from other ICUs that will take an assignment down there.

OP - I think our heme/onc + BMT unit is a lot like yours. It's a huge unit but they're never empty. And during the holidays, unlike on other units, their census actually seems to go UP.

melmarie23, MSN, RN · Oct 20, 2013

I work LDRP and we get called off every so often. It's by dates with us, and it averages every 2-3months for a call off.

Some weeks/months are slow for birthing babies!

blondy2061h, MSN, RN · Oct 20, 2013

Obviously the LD part means labor and delivery, but what's the RP?