Emergency Staffing

[melinda hatton, BSN]

As an experienced nurse of 12 years I have been a lot of places, and seen a lot of different things. As a traveler now, the facility I am at does "Emergency Staffing", where the RN takes extra patients due to staffing needs. Although you have a tech dedicated to only you and your patients, I don't feel comfortable with this. I have been emergency staffed on a telemetry unit with 6 patients, 2 that were post- cath and needed q15 minutes checks. The other time was on a step-down unit with 5 patients, 1 of whose was in complete heart block. To me, this seems unsafe. Does anywhere else do this? I feel like my license could be jeopardized in these type of situations.