assignments based on Patient Accuity

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Does anyone use a system in which patient assignments are based on patient accuity, especially in med surg?

Alan

Assignments on the general pediatric floors are done the same way. So that everything balances out. Not automatically that the next four patients are assigned to the next nurse.........

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Specializes in Utilization Management.

Our staffing is done such that we take inventory of all the "total" patients or the difficult patients and we try to split the assignments so that everyone gets a fair share of the misery. ;) Newbies get a lighter assignment than we do, if anything, because they don't know where everything is.

Sometimes that blows up in our faces though. One memorable night, I had 7 patients, none of whom were "difficult" --and two of them crashed and had to go to the Unit on me. Thank God my coworkers helped me get done, or I'd still be there charting to this day. :chuckle

One of our sister hospitals can't keep staff because they'll pile as many as 10 acute patients onto the float nurses with 1 tech. Very dangerous. Extremely stupid on their part, because I haven't met one person who would ever choose to work there.

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