Changes on rehab unit

[alicemary]

Hey Guys, am new here. Work in an 18 bed acute rehab unit in a large hospital. We are going through a large transition now, we lost about 6 rn's in the past 2 months(some moved, some moved up to better jobs, a couple left because they were not rehab nurses). We have supportive manager and administration. Staffing has been a nightmare lately, we used to have great staffing of 1 RN to 5 patients with each nurses aide having 6-8 patients. No more, they want nurses to have 6-9 patients now. Management says we have been overstaffed when compared with other rehabs across the country. We are a very busy unit, with alot of multi trauma's, always 2-4 tbi's, heavy with cva's. They also consulted with Centerre, anyone have experiece with them???

Thanks for your comments, have read an earlier post about staffing ratio being 8:1, and I fear we are headed that way. By the way, love rehab, having been doing it for over 6 years. ICU was alot easier!

[takenbyjoy]

Hi there and welcome! Have never heard of Centerre....what are they? Our staffing is running 1 nurse to 4-5 patients. They have a whole LOT of down time. We are a 25 bed acute rehab center, affiliated with university med. center, with an average daily census of 18-20. We get all diagnoses, including TBIs, CVAs, multiple trauma, bilateral TKAs, etc. My experiece at another facility was to have 6-9 patients and that was on a busy rehab/ortho post-op floor. I think it's doable.....your patients are in therapy for 3 hours per day, so staggering dressing changes and other treatments is possible. At the other facility, we blocked off nursing treatment time till 9 AM to allow for med. administration (schedule for 8 AM). This helped with some of the "scheduled teatments." Hope this helps!

[oramar]

they want nurses to have 6-9 patients now. Management says we have been overstaffed when compared with other rehabs across the country.

While 6/7 is doable, 8/9 is to many. Most the time I have 4 to 7. Manage fine, 8/9 the patient really start to notice the decline in care.

[mel1977]

I am in a rehab facility. we are 60 bed acute/sub-acute with a 21 bed TBI wing, a CVA, SCI and ORtho beds. We have four teams and each team depending on number of pts has two primary nurses. On days the RN usually does not take a patient assignment, the techs have from 8-12 patients and there are medication nurses. On Eves, there are four RNS. One on brain injury and the other three split up the other two wings. Each nurse has about two techs that split that patient assignment and again, when the census is good, three med nurses. Not sure about nocs though. Sometimes we are def understaffed for our acuity. But, when you work for private companies, it is often that way. Doesn't matter that on one hall there are six dependent TBIs, twelve tubes, three traches, two vail beds, a couple with wander guards and so forth-or say three quads and a six hundred pound pt the add in how many CVAs down the hall are either confused, incontinent, dependent or just hitting the call light every six mins. For ONE day I'd love to have the big wigs work the floor and see what it is like to carry the loads we do (don't get me wrong, we do have our light days....) I do meds most of the time, sometimes I tech and team lead. we all do everything. An RN may pass meds or take a 10 patient assignment "teching". Most of us love our place of work so much that we are willing to deal with our not so great staffing issues. They really are trying to help us out as much as possible and I work with a great TEAm. Everyone is great. HOpefully, this FIM stuff will help out. Did I get off topic?????