Things that just annoy me

Nurses General Nursing

Published

Our coordinator last night kept sending every non-critical case from the ER to our floor (Med-Surg), until we were out of beds (we have 35 on our unit). Every nurse had 8 pts, except for the poor charge nurse who had 9. WE wound up being short a nurse because that SAME coordinator called her off when we had only 24 pts. Then less than 2 1/2 hours we're a full floor!!! Meanwhile other floors had 24-28 pts!!! And the nurse/pt. ratio 4-1. The coordinator's reason? "Oh i like the way you all do your job compared to the other floors". So pile the work on them double time. GREAT idea.:rolleyes:

That sounds like my floor! I work on a 36 bed telemetry unit. On the 10p-6a part of the 6p-6a shift, we have 4 RN's IF the census is >30. BUT, if we have 29, one of us either gets pulled or has a paid on-call. I also need to add that all the heart caths are admitted to this floor also. They start coming in at 4am. Staffing doesn't want to hear that ED is packed (we'll get many of the admits) and/or that we have 4 caths scheduled at 4am and another 4 sceduled for 5am. There have been many pt's admitted to this floor who do not meet the criteria for a tele floor. I could go on and on about this unit, but I just got home from work and need to get some sleep...yes, I work tonight and it will be a repeat of last night.:uhoh3:

Specializes in ICU.

Patient nurse dependency systems are a PITA BUT they do stop this sort of thing from happening. YOu need to lobby to have thses intorduced ASAP. They are not the full answer and they are not a perfect solution BUT by measuring pt acuity with a few "critical indicators" they help to allocate staff better.

An example

every patient is allocated 1/3 hour nursing care as baseline as you clidk boxes i.e. mobile vs total assist medications counselling and 30 - 60 minute "procedures" Teh time requirement for nursing that patient rises so that at the totals can be allocated. This also means that the bay with the four diabetic patients on sliding scale insulin with antibiotics and involved dressings are not given to just one nurse but maybe allocated across two nurses.

Specializes in Case Management, Home Health, UM.

Management tells us:

"Take CHARGE of your censuses!"

"This is a TEAM effort!"

"You are ALL doing a GREAT job!", followed by the inevitable:

"We (who's WE??) are going to TEN-HOUR shifts, SEVEN DAYS A WEEK!"

And we ask: "Are WE going to be compensated for that?"

....To Which Management says: (Silence)...............

#$*&%!! :( :( :(

Specializes in Corrections, Psych, Med-Surg.

"Don't blame the coordinator, blame yourselves. Taking nine patients with a 4:1 ratio is insane. Stop the insanity."

Remember:

+ Add a Comment