Cross-training when pulling nurses---or not?

Both facilities I worked at cross trained. At the first one, a very large facility with high tech critical care, you could only be sent to a unit within your core: critical care, medsurg/onc, SRMC/Peds. This ensured that medsurg staff wasn't sent to ICU, etc., unless the medsurg nurse was willing. At my last place, a rural hospital, you could refuse to float but then you would be sent home if the census was down.

I have only been floated to areas in which were similar to where I currently was working. I am now an ICU nurse so I can be pulled to any ICU. However a CICU nurse coming to my unit wouldn't be given certain paitents. We are a neuro ICU, so we would never give them a pt with a lumbar drain or a EVD (ventriculostomy). We aren't floated to the ER. Med surg nurses float within all our med surg units.

Would a med-surg nurse be pulled to ICU or L&D, or would they be given some cross-training first?

Cross training used to be showing you where the supplies and charts where kept if it was different from your home unit. Later, they did decide to give you a little training on the unit they decided to float you to on a frequent basis. That said, it is always up to the nurse being floated to speak up if there is a procedure or treatment of care on the new unit you are not comfortable in doing. Sometimes it is better to go home, skip the money, and get some extra rest than risk your license.

Hi Jan, It has been my experience that a med/surge nurse can be pulled to the ICU, that nurse would be given the most stable of patients, ones waiting for a floor bed usually. No L & D, postpartum maybe, but stable ones. It has been my experience that a seasoned med/surge nurse can go to many, many units and function enough to assist the staff but many, many speciality nurses can not work a med/surge unt well.

at the facility I currently work Med/Surg RN's stay within their scope which is 9South,8South,6South, 6North, 4North, and if an RN is needed in tele and does not have her ACLS another nurse will read her strips for him/her.

An ER and ICU nurse are interchangeable and same applies to PEDS and L+D.

Of course this only applies to my facility

Never! A nurse is a nurse, is a nurse......

I know, scary:eek::eek::eek: