Critical Care Staffing Patterns

Originally posted by Oldtimer:
Hi!
As a general rule my Hospital would always put 2 nurses on duty. We transfer other ICU pts. to fill an area with espically low census.
However, I got stuck one 12 hr. night shift as the only RN in the CVICU with one patient on an IABP. I did not have any ancillary help assigned. I had to do secretary duties as well. The night Supervisor could not relieve me because she has no ICU experience and had not worked as a bedside nurse in over 20 years. I wrote the incident up as unsafe and came very close to being fired. I paid a very heavy price for standing up for safe patient practices. It is very interesting that Nurses in Management are the very ones who end up working so hard to defeat us. Lesson learned - If you need your job keep your mouth shut!

Originally posted by k.Sheldon:
I am a fairly experianced manager of an 10 bed ICU/CCU in a Suburban Hospital with an average daily census of 6 but lately we have been experiancing low census days. Lately my Chief Nursing Officer has asked me to staff the unit when census(1-2patients) is low with One RN and on assistive person ie tech, nurses aide. I have not felt that this is a safe staffing pattern. She feels that we have to think out of the box. My question is does any critical care unit staff in this manner?