low census sucks!!!

nursenow · Aug 4, 2009

ok, so I've lost 16 hours off my check this pay period....3 shifts to go and I'm off again today! If I stay off it'll be 28 hrs! This sucks....I know that the economy's down, but it also doesn't help there are 17!!!! nurses on the night shift...hardly any patients....so, what ya gonna do? I've told my finance that I hope the downtime is only due to summer, but if the hours stay down over the next 6 months, I'll have to trade floors or go somewhere else....good thing I'm working two jobs, but still....let's all say a quick prayer that work picks up for us all!

In california ours is way down also. Of 24 beds I have only 16 filled on my floor. I dont understand why it would go down because of the summer though. Are all those old/sick people out enjoying the weather and waiting for winter before they go into a facility? Actually, on a serious note, what would make it go down? Very few of ours are self pay so sometimes I do wonder what causes everyones census to drop at the same time. Our facility keeps the nurses on because they dont want to lose them and have to train new ones when it picks up again though. Sometimes they will have one nurse at each station go home 1.5 hours early each day which at my facility is the same as one nurse not coming in that day hours wise. (6 nurses on the LTC/SNF floor at a time.) Funny thing is we have a psych wing which is another world behind locked doors and their census never goes down so the psych techs and nurses never worry about it.