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ok.... well... now, after a talk with my boss....
I told her that me being on light duty and working on the floor at the same time was a little crazy... (I worded it nicer) I end up doing about 30 sec of work for each nurse... little dressings that can be done without having to hold up the affected extremity, and fingersticks. Total these past 3 days, I've done 7 admits.

My boss told me that technically, my presence on the floor reduces pt to nurse ratios. I told her that doing that was a bad practice... and god forbid anything happen, it'd essentially be her fault for not staffing properly, as every nurse is protesting the assignment.

Typically, our staffing is terrible.... but not unbearably horrible as its been for the past few days... We've just lost 3 more evening nurses...

And....Shunda--- if the patient would have died, there would be a lawsuit, and everybody who had taken care of the would have been sued. SO-- I'd say, you need good malpractice insurance just for issues like that...

NY does not have safe staffing laws... if it was up to me, I'd say no more that 6 patients per nurse... and, that would mean 8 nurses every day for the evening shift. sad thing is, we only have 11 nurses now total for the shift. Turnover is high d/t the high stress (both mental and physical), and the fact that we need to be crosstrained in everything, and that the higher ups are hireing the nastiest, laziest nurses that Nobody wants to deal with.... but, thats another story...

lucky me has 2 days off now... I think I'm gonna sleep every minute...
--Barbara