Floating policies- Tenet

[RNasj]

The hospital I currently work at, has been floating Nurses constantly. Our current CNO has the belief that "a nurse is a nurse and can work any unit." I am a postpartum nurse who has only worked in the mother baby world, like many of my coworkers. Postpartum nurses are getting floated to Tele units and are assigned a 6 patient assignment with patients on tele monitoring and chest tubes.

I work for a Tenet hospital and was told that the Tenet policy on floating is that nurses can float to whichever unit they are needed on. I cannot find the actual policy on our intranet, so if any of you work for a Tenet hospital and have access to the floating policy I would love to see it!

[Atl-Murse]

I am sure there is that annoying phrase in your work contract " any assigned duties"

[gcupid]

report hospital and report hospital everytime u hear of one of your coworkers floating and refuse to accept a tele assignment but be willing to assist would be motto until another job calls me back for an interview.

[MSUOUgirl]

We have enough staff on our psych unit but we are forced to float to cover a similar unit; at least a couple nurses a day to another unit to be charge nurses since they are staffed primarily by agency and contigent nurses. Our schedule is made up to also coincide with their schedule to make sure there is coverage for them as well. I have never heard of such a thing anywhere else. We take turns but there is a lot of arguing amongst the nurses on our unit about who has to float. The morale is pretty low at this point.

[Calalilynurse]

Don't work for tenet. But do a lot of floating to areas in our cluster. Know the a nurse is a nurse feeling. Put in some applications elsewhere and leave on good terms I hope the cno won't be there long.

[Julius Seizure]

report hospital and report hospital everytime u hear of one of your coworkers floating and refuse to accept a tele assignment but be willing to assist would be motto until another job calls me back for an interview.

Report to who?

[RosesrReder, BSN, MSN, RN]

Like anything, you have to have minimal competencies signed off. Just like I wouldn't expect just anyone to float to NICU or circulate/scrub in the OR. If you are not signed off on chest tubes and the like, then you aren't competent to float there; however, I've worked for Tenet for many years and they do the yearly competencies fair and if you stood by a chest tubes station, possess ACLS then you were signed off and are considered competent. At the end of the day, if you're not comfortable then ask for some orientation to certain tasks but you will not get to not float. GL