Census dreadfully low at our hospital, anyone else???

[pink2blue1]

For about 3 weeks now our census ha been realy low. Not just our floor, but the whole hospital. Nurses are getting called off or sent home mid shift daily. It's frustrating. They have some staffing matrix that they talk bout, but none of the nurses have ever seen it. They call off the CNA's and unit secretary at a certain number. Then of course the nurses have to stay in ratio, so once we get to where there is one too many nurses, they send a nurse home. Yesterday was horrid. We started with 14 patients and discharged 5 then ended up somehow with 20 by the end of the shift (Our floor can take 30) but they literally slammed us. PACU patients started coming up at 2pm and there were only 2 nurses who could really take admits. Me and an RN. The RN got the ER admits (I am an LVN and cant do the admit assessment) and I got 3 PACU patients, within 3 hours of eachother. I was hanging blood/FFP on 2 of my patients that were on the floor already, and as luck would have it, both of their IV's went bad. One before the transfusion of FFP and the other in the middle of the unit of PRBC's. This patient was waiting to go home after his unit. In the midst of all this they decided to send our CNA"s home and our secretary home. So we had only nurses and a charge with PACU patients coming. It was crazy. The manager was on the phone with staffing and talking about how they haven't met their "quota" for the staffing matrix in a while! Geez! What about SAFE patient care!!!

[ImMrBill3, RN]

There has been some low census at the hospital I do my clinicals at. I am in the SICU/MICU now and they have called off nurses a few times in the last weeks. CCU shut down and sent their pts to MICU over a weekend. This is very unusual at this hospital. I am sure the patients are piling up and acuity will go through the roof, no one has insurance or a job and those that do can't afford time off or copays, sooo they will wait until they keel over and come in by ambulance...