Unsafe Assignment & Pt Abandonment

[GM2RN]

Good Morning Everyone

I work in the ED for a hospital in Michigan, and like many other hospitals these days, mine has been forcing nurses to work under-staffed for quite some time. Not every day, but often enough that I'm sick of letting it continue and I'm trying to figure out how to effectively protest while doing what I can to protect my license and my job.

I've been trying to get information about my rights to refuse an unsafe patient assignment, and what constitutes patient abandonment. If I worked on the floor I wouldn't have a problem, but working in the ED makes me less certain of how these two issues work.

I called the Bureau of Health Professions this morning, and the short version of my story is that since Michigan has no NPA, they couldn't help me. The person that I spoke with referred me to an individual that licenses hospitals, thinking that he could give me some answers, but I had to leave a VM for that person and haven't heard back from him yet.

Do any of you know the answers to my questions or where I can get this information?

Thanks.

[nurse.sandi]

What is the unsafe patient ratio? There may be consequences with your employer if you refuse. I refused an assignment before on the stepdown unit and made the manager take an assignment. Needless to say after that I was on the bad gal list. It is scary to be in the situation you are in. I have heard horror stories of emergency room nurses. Good luck.

Since, MI does not have patient ratio laws like Cali...there really is not much we can do...unless we rally Lansing.

[BabyLady, BSN, RN]

Good Morning Everyone

I work in the ED for a hospital in Michigan, and like many other hospitals these days, mine has been forcing nurses to work under-staffed for quite some time. Not every day, but often enough that I'm sick of letting it continue and I'm trying to figure out how to effectively protest while doing what I can to protect my license and my job.

I've been trying to get information about my rights to refuse an unsafe patient assignment, and what constitutes patient abandonment. If I worked on the floor I wouldn't have a problem, but working in the ED makes me less certain of how these two issues work.

I called the Bureau of Health Professions this morning, and the short version of my story is that since Michigan has no NPA, they couldn't help me. The person that I spoke with referred me to an individual that licenses hospitals, thinking that he could give me some answers, but I had to leave a VM for that person and haven't heard back from him yet.

Do any of you know the answers to my questions or where I can get this information?

Thanks.

Every state is different.

In my state, you are not legally responsible for a patient until you receive report or if it is a new patient, perform the triage for admission.

Until one or the other happens, if you refuse to take a patient, it is not abandonment.

Just TELLING you a patient is yours, should not constitute "accepting" of the patient.

[BeenThere2012, ASN, RN]

I work for a union hospital and I'm a member of MNA. They have been addressing the issue but the grievance process is so slow, and the hospital continues it's non-contractual practices in the meantime. I don't want to go into details here, but a patient came extremely close to being harmed a couple of days ago because of it, and it can be directly related to the staffing issue that we have been complaining about. If that incident doesn't cause them to make some changes, then nothing will.

Unfortunately, my experience has been they blame the nurse and sometimes make a policy change after a near miss that only serves to give the nurses another thing to check or do or follow...when I say "they" I mean hospital administrations in general. I would HOPE they take it seriously though. Good luck. I don't know what to say to answer your question directly. I recently took an online course on this subject. It was based on ANA guidelines and their answer was vague...They only say to "work" with the manager when over whelmed. Try splitting assignments and the like...duh!

[GM2RN]

Unfortunately, my experience has been they blame the nurse and sometimes make a policy change after a near miss that only serves to give the nurses another thing to check or do or follow...when I say "they" I mean hospital administrations in general. I would HOPE they take it seriously though. Good luck. I don't know what to say to answer your question directly. I recently took an online course on this subject. It was based on ANA guidelines and their answer was vague...They only say to "work" with the manager when over whelmed. Try splitting assignments and the like...duh!

I have long since moved on, but from what I hear, nothing has changed.

[BeenThere2012, ASN, RN]

I have long since moved on, but from what I hear, nothing has changed.

Whoops...just noticed the date on your post. Hope all is well. Just curious...what happened?