Maternal Child Services Safe Staffing?

[rck213]

As a member of the Society of Pediatric Nurses, a national organization with many local chapters involved in promoting standards of care for children in all healthcare settings, I am asking for input on staffing issues for Peds units, PICU, NICU, Nursery or any area that cares for pediatric patients.

We are trying to develop a position paper on safe staffing and I am interested in how your department determines what the criteria for safe staffing is on your unit.

I have been a peds nurse for over 20 years and am working for a facility basing care on the bottom line. We lost our peds nurse manager, we lost staff positions , both RN and ancillary. We have no ped resource person in our facility. We have been told we must care for 7 patients each regardless of age or diagnosis based on the fact "The med surg floors do it".

Any input would be greatly appreciated, I don't think my institution is the only facility ignoring the uniqueness of pediatric care.

Thanks in advance

:)

[purplemania, BSN, RN]

As a peds nurse in pedi hospital I had 7-10 pt. but the lab, RT and every other discipline understood peds. I had plenty of support and was expected to do nursing only. Now I am in a county general hosp. on pedi floor. We do all phlebotomy, oversee RT and are expected to entertain the parents. The ratio here is 5:1. I work nights and rarely have an aide and NEVER have a unit clerk. The entire floor is run by the 2-4 nurses on duty and believe me when I say we do everything. So the ratio depends on the job.

[NicuGal, MSN, RN]

We are a level III NICU...our staffing is dependent on acuity. We have anything from 1:1 to 1:4 nurse to patient ratio. We never have more than 4 "feeder/stable" kids. We take 2 vents and a feeder most of the time, never more than 2 vents. For Chronic kids we try to limit it to 2 kids per assignment, if staffing allows it.

Our peds floors will have 4-6 patients per nurse, usually with a care partner assigned to help.

[pmkmom]

As a peds nurse in a general pediatric unit we usually have 5-6 patients. We have anywhere from zero to two techs responsible for a 25 bed unit. With certain kids we keep the staffing to 4:1. The toughest to handle is 6 babies with no family present - but everyone usually pitches in to help when the crying gets too loud!

[fiestynurse]

**********