What other profession floats?

[moonshadeau]

What other profession besides nurses float?

Janitors- their job-I couldn't do without them, is fairly standardized.

Teachers- even teachers have substitutes.

Secretaries- well, they can't kill anyone with their poor shorthand technique.

Those are the only few that I can think of at the moment. Feel free to add more if you can think of them.

But really, why do we float nurses? Those people that literally have a patients life in their hands for every minute of the shift that they work.

Why don't doctors float? Sorry, DR. OBGYN, Dr. Psych called in sick, you have to cover his patients for him today? Or dietary, hey, put down that apple juice and go look at UA's for the day. Sorry but we have a sick call to cover. It is your duty to cover.

The whole rampage began today. We have a step down unit, that like the rest of the country is becoming more acute daily. Unfortunately, they have lost over half of their staff but yet still try to maintain full capacity. Even though, our unit is one unit, it is composed of telemetry and step down. The only place that we are floated is telemetry, step down and ICU. Well, you might say that is ok?. Well, I have over 100 float hours in 2 months. I am the "it" girl over there. We can't take so and so because of... or that they flip and freak out too easily. Mind you that in all the float hours, there has been no education or orientation provided to any staff that floats. One time occurance, hey anyone may be able to get through a shift. But continually floating unexperienced staff is just plain dangerous. I knew that I was to float this am, which would have been ok, except I had a new grad. I wasn't going to float with a new grad. To take away from his orientation and set up for a potentially dangerous situation. "well, other nurses and new grads have done it, It worked before, why not now". I refused.

Why do we continually become martyrs when our license is in serious danger?

Tell the doctors, stop admitting patients, or you can float to the understaffed areas!

Do you really want to have someone working on you or your loved one in a critical care setting that may or may not be a "float". How many more mistakes are made when people float, not to mention those fatal? Those are mistakes that I don't want to make or find out about.

Please feel free to enlighten me or share your stories of floating.

Stepping off soap box and waving to crowd.

[panda_181]

The way it works in my hospital up here in Alberta...if you weren't orientated to that unit, you can only do task there. And that's fine...works for me...

But one day when I was on Maternity and I discharged all my patients, I got pulled to be charge nurse on Psych...I have not been orientated there! But when I offer to work a night 8 when they will all be sleeping (not charge) they said they couldn't let me do that because I hadn't been orientated! What a crock...

Amanda :)

[JWaldron]

Oh,yeah, I forgot (Freudian?) the part about floating between facilities. We recently merged with another hospital in the county, and we have been told that we will eventually be floated from one facility to the other and back. It hasn't actually started yet, and I pray it never will, but that is too much to hope for.

Savvy

[kmaryniak]

Sorry, I guess I shouldn't have generalized for Canada. I didn't realize how much floating actually went on. Perhaps it was just our hospital, because we haven't floated for years.

[chicoborja]

I know that retail pharmacists often float

[Hellllllo Nurse, BSN, RN]

Have you read the book "NURSE ABUSE: Impact and Resolution"?

Floating to unfamiliar areas of practise is listed right on the front cover as a prime example of NURSE ABUSE.

Here is some info from the book:

Are you a nurse? Have you read ...

IMPACT and RESOLUTION

Written By

Joan Swirsky, RN, MS, CS

Harold Stearley, RN, BSN, CCRN

Laura Gasparis Vonfrolio, RN, PhD, CEN, CCRN

This book is fast becoming the catalyst for meaningful changes in nursing.

No nurse should be without it!

The second edition of this popular, revolutionary book documents the pervasive abuse of nurses that begins with their academic and clinical training and continues into all settings in which nurses work.

Undervalued, stereotyped, treated with cavalier indifference and crass condescension, nurses are now facing replacement by unlicensed aides, short staffing, being floated to areas outside their expertise, the wholesale dismantling of their profession, and the exploitation of their patients in the name of corporate profits.

In Nurse Abuse: Impact and Resolution, the voices of nurses surge with outrage and suggestions for action. "I'm fed up and I'm not going to take it anymore!" resonates on every page, with staff nurses and nursing educators and administrators focusing not only on the frustrations, problems, and barriers they face but on the concrete, doable solutions that can help the noble art and science of nursing gain its rightful and respected place in the healthcare system.

Publisher: Power Publications

ISBN: 1-888315-02-4

Price: $24.95

Here is a link:

http://www.gift-of-life.com/nurse.htm

In my opinion, truer writing has never been published.

[fab4fan]

but those pharmacists are still doing the same job; they're not being floated to another store and then asked to fill in or the store manager, whocalled in sick that day.

i haven't worked m/s for several years (i work ed). the staffing coordinator called me one day a few months ago, wanting to know if i would be charge on m/s, as the nurse scheduled had called out sick. i really thought it was a joke at first, and laughed...when the person on the other end of the line said, "why are you laughing?", i realized it was not a joke, she was serious!!

a nurse is not some sort of interchangeable part that can fit anywhere. we each have skills/talents unique to our area of practice. if hospitals expect any different, they might as well turn the hospital checkbook over to the malpractice attorneys.

[chelseadog]

Would like opinions on the folowing Floating problem:

My fellow RN and I have worked for many years in a Nursing Home. She transferred to the Medical Model Daycare part time about 2 years ago and I transferred there about one year ago.

About 3 weeks ago we had a snow storm. We each had to call a few of the registrants to tell them the program would be open but transportation would be about an hour late. I drove to work and was stuck on the road about an hour trying to get up a hill. We had about 18 registrants show up. AT about 12 noon the nursing supervisor called over and wanted a nurse to come to the nursing home to take an assignment for a nurse that called in. (This particular nurse ALWAYS calls in) When we are short a nurse they do not float to help us out. Neither of us wanted to go. We had been doing community nursing for the past few years. We didn't feel it was safe for the residents or for ourselves. We think a better, safer solution would have been to call the evening nurse in a few hours early.

Since I had less seniority I was chosen to float. The DON told the director of the Daycare program if I refused they would bring me up on abandonment charges. So against my better judgement I floated to the nursing home.

Today there was another snow storm. The program was closed but all staff were expected to come in probably to be floated to the nursing home. Most of the staff called in sick.

What does everyone think about floating from community nurse to nursing home nurse and the threat of job abandonment????

[canoehead, BSN, RN]

You can't be charged with abandonment on a patient you never took report on so your sup was talking out of her hoo-hoo.

In an emergency it's nice to help out however you can...what about telling the sup you will do tasks but another nurse will have to take over on the "charge" decisions, which makes sense, as you don't know the routine or the patients. Then, force her to introduce you to this "charge" when you get there so she doesn't weasel out of it, and bring up the whole situation at the next staff meeting so that a) you won't end up in that situation again, or b) you get enough training to pinch hit when necessary.

[caroladybelle, BSN, RN]

Originally posted by chelseadog

Since I had less seniority I was chosen to float. The DON told the director of the Daycare program if I refused they would bring me up on abandonment charges. So against my better judgement I floated to the nursing home.

What does everyone think about floating from community nurse to nursing home nurse and the threat of job abandonment????

And would these idiots have paid your bills for life, when you lose your license from taking an inappropriate assignment? Would they pay the malpractice bill?

Tell the Supervisor to take off her silks and her spotless gloves and do the assignment herself.

[oramar]

I previously worked at a facility that was in big financial trouble. Conditions were going down hill fast. We went from being rarely being pulled to every one in the house being PRN in about two years. Well they put me in ICU a few times with the promise that I would only care for telemetry patients. I came down with the disease I call "creeping acuity". It occurs when a person does not speak up. They find themselves in more and more dangerous situations with sicker and sicker patients on units for which they were never trained to work. After a short time I wised up and started to refuse to take the assignments. At first I was harassed but finally they backed off and let me alone. A few months later I found that they had discontinued the practice of putting non ICU nurses in ICU. Turns out there was a law suit and the hospital was in big trouble because the incident that led to the suit occured when an ICU patient was under care of med/surg nurse that had been pulled. When records were checked it was found that the patient in question had mostly been cared for by non ICU nurses. Turns out managment was really shaking in it's boots. I could not help but think at the time that had I not started to refuse being pulled to ICU I would have been involved in the whole mess.

[mattsmom81]

Oramar I work with lots of tele nurses who feel the same way you do...and have watched some bad situations occur because of management's playing around with the 'warm body' approach to floating. We do indeed need to learn when to say 'NO' and to mean it when we say it.:stone

Also want to add: while I DEFINITELY appreciate the tele nurse who comes to ICU to help me in a pinch, we get onto a slippery slope when this float practice becomes management's answer to every short staffed ICU day. It's not fair to the tele nurse nor to me who must supervise the tele nurse, and most of all, not fair to the ICU patient to have a non ICU nurse. The facility is sure charging for critical care... so they should staff for it IMHO.

[tiredfeetED]

I know you fly propeller planes for a living.....This 747 is just Bigger!