Low Acuity Floors

[daisygirl5]

Hello!! What would be an axample of a low acuity floor/unit in a hospital setting? For example, would med/surg be considered a low acuity floor?

Thanks for your perspectives on this!

[HouTx, BSN, MSN, EdD]

If you break down the concept of "acuity", you're actually looking at 2 factors: 1) Intensity and 2) workload. Intensity refers to the amount of nursing assessment & interventions that need to be done... you can have a completely ambulatory patient that has high intensity needs if they are dealing with a new diagnosis or have to learn self-care management in a very short amount of time. On the other hand, you can have very stable patients (low intensity) that have a very high workload... such as comatose patients.

Unfortunately, the amount of staff available for patient care is dictated by the budgeted number of "nursing hours" per patient... so there just isn't any 'down time' these days. In many cases, there is no consideration of "acuity" at all. Staffing is just based on number of patients.

[BSNbeauty, BSN, RN]

I agree that mother baby is not lower acuity nowadays. I have moms with HTN,DM, infections, some requires blood transfusions. Not to count our antepartums. Most days I barely get to sit down. Then we have the babies that we have to take care of too, who sometimes need ABT, bili lights and etc. The patients are not super sick but they aren't 100 percent healthy either. Every floor has their pros/cons.

[benegesserit]

Just make sure you're aware that low acuity does not mean less work. Low acuity units tend to have worse staffing ratios than higher acuity units.

Yep. I work LTC. Low acuity (though often at least one will be med-surg acuity), but I have 25-35 patients to juggle.