What exactly is Rural Nursing

santhony44, MSN, RN, NP · Sep 10, 2007

Critical access, technically 25 beds, probably 10 beds realistically. Currently no OB nor OR due to only one physician (actively recruiting two more) plus 2 NPs.

ER is a room, with one treatment room for overflow. Lab and x-ray go home and are on call. We are about 30 miles from a city of 250,000 people and a couple of big hospitals.

You know you're doing rural when your elderly patient arrives in ER following her MVA and when her son-in-law shows up, he says "I'd have been here sooner but I couldn't get off the phone." "Who were you talking to?" "Everybody who saw the accident!" He'd had like three different people call and tell him his MIL had been in an accident and was in the ER!

snowfreeze, BSN, RN · Dec 29, 2007

I have found rural nursing by accident, and I think I like it so far. I am a travel nurse and was hired as ICU/telemetry. My second week here in a small town in Maine I took care of a 20 hour old baby and c-section mom and one of my two admissions was a 5 yo with abd pain, the other was a 96yo with seizures. I asked the supervisor if they were comfortable giving me the OB/GYN newborn assignment and they said that the two OB nurses were sick so I was the next best thing. Well until last evening I had not checked a fundus since nursing school nor had I changed a diaper on a newborn for 17 1/2 years for my youngest child. I see where rural nursing is a jack of all trades type thing. This is a small town, pop around 5,000 I think and I work in a 25 bed facility. Having OB, ICU, tele, med/surg and rehab all on one small unit is interesting.

wizap · Dec 31, 2007

Rural Nurses stretch and grow!!! Never know what you will be doing next!!!! LOL:lol2::balloons:

snowfreeze, BSN, RN · Dec 31, 2007

Thanks for the support wizap!!!! I sure was scared going into report that night..didnt seem so bad by morning report time though.

mtndew · Mar 19, 2008

I am the nurse manager for a fedrally qualified health center. The nearest hospital is 37 miles north or 42 miles south of here. We frequently have emergency patients who walk into our center with lacerations, mva, chest pain. We stabilize and call the ambulance. We do have a lab, for send outs only. We don't have any xray. :no:

loriangel14, RN · Aug 7, 2008

I work in a 26 bed hospital about 15 miles from a full service hospital. We have no ER or OR and one doc that does rounds once a week and if we call her specifically to come to sign orders or death certificates. We handle physical rehab, palliative, elderly waiting for nursing home placement and oddball pts that don't fit anywhere else( usually mental health).

Neveranurseagain, RN · Aug 13, 2008

I guess my community is not big enough to be called even rural! We have about 35,000 people (including a large state prison) and our community hospital is a 35 bed SNF with 1 (yes you read it right!) overnite bed. It has 6 ER beds that see almost 1000 pts a mth. There are no specialists, not even an ortho on staff. No ICU, no CCU. Located 10 miles away is a Extreme Sports Camp specializing in BMX, Skateboarding and Inline skating and Olympic level gymnastics that will have up to 4 fractures a day on a busy day, not to mention head injuries. Children/adults are flown by helicopter that takes on average an hr to get them to a Level 1 facilty. The hospital here is the only one in a 45 mile radius.

And to top it off, the fire dept only has EMT's, no paramedic for the first 20min, and if the ambulance is on another call it will take up to an hr to get an ACLS ambulance. Alot of pts. chose to drive themselves to the hospital, even with chest pain as it takes a minumin of 50 min to arrive by ambulance. So some of them are not in the best of shape when they arrive.

heartlover07, RN · Aug 14, 2008

I guess my community is not big enough to be called even rural! We have about 35,000 people (including a large state prison) and our community hospital is a 35 bed SNF with 1 (yes you read it right!) overnite bed. It has 6 ER beds that see almost 1000 pts a mth. There are no specialists, not even an ortho on staff. No ICU, no CCU. Located 10 miles away is a Extreme Sports Camp specializing in BMX, Skateboarding and Inline skating and Olympic level gymnastics that will have up to 4 fractures a day on a busy day, not to mention head injuries. Children/adults are flown by helicopter that takes on average an hr to get them to a Level 1 facilty. The hospital here is the only one in a 45 mile radius.
And to top it off, the fire dept only has EMT's, no paramedic for the first 20min, and if the ambulance is on another call it will take up to an hr to get an ACLS ambulance. Alot of pts. chose to drive themselves to the hospital, even with chest pain as it takes a minumin of 50 min to arrive by ambulance. So some of them are not in the best of shape when they arrive.

I know the camp that you speak of, I worked there for a summer doing the overnight horseback trial rides for the campers! Wow, I didnt realize there were that many injuries there on a daily basis! I know I was one of them, I ended up in the ER after one of the horses threw me on the ground and then proceeded to stand on my femur with all of her weight until someone pushed her off of me! :eek: :bluecry1:

Luckily it was not broken, but i had a huge bruise in the shape of a horseshoe for quite some time :chuckle :chuckle

vanillavirtue · Aug 26, 2008

Don't usually Rural hospitals pay more than hospitals in large cities?

ruralnurs · Aug 26, 2008

Not in my neck of the woods. Infact we are loosing MDs because they can go to facilities in bigger places for more $$ and less on-call time. Often these little rural hospitals struggle to survive financially and pay less than bigger places. There are 3 hospitals about an hour and a half away from me and all pay more than we do. However I have heard that in Alaska the pay is more but that is subsidized by the government.

vanillavirtue · Aug 26, 2008

Not in my neck of the woods. Infact we are loosing MDs because they can go to facilities in bigger places for more $$ and less on-call time. Often these little rural hospitals struggle to survive financially and pay less than bigger places. There are 3 hospitals about an hour and a half away from me and all pay more than we do. However I have heard that in Alaska the pay is more but that is subsidized by the government.

I guess in some of the rural hospitals in MS, they pay more than some of the larger city hospitals. The rural hospitals that do pay more, they really don't have a shortage. Most people are attracted to the hospitals in the city than the rural ones, but here in MS they tend to pay more and I guess that is to attract more people to work for them.

ozark · Sep 16, 2008

I live in the Ozark Mountain area of Southern Missouri. Our hospital has 220 beds and includes ER, ICU, OB/GYN, Peds, Mental Health, Urology, Medical, Surgery, Comprehensive Cardiac program, Physical Rehab and Ortho floors. My hometown has a population of 16,000. However, we have the ONLY hospital in a 75 mile radius. We care for patients from 6 different counties and man do we stay busy. Our yearly ER visits topped 35,000 last year and this year it has been even busier! :smokin: