Floating policy?

[MA Nurse]

Just curious: what is your floating policy where you work? Do you have to work all areas, or do you get to pick which area you want to work in?

Do you get orientation to the unit or are you just floated anywhere because a nurse can work anywhere?! lol

Where I used to work, a Children's hospital ,we had to float everywhere but the ER. We had a reference nurse, that was it.

Where I work now, we choose where we want to float..either Peds, PICU or Post-partum. We are only required to take care of babies 1 yr. or younger...unless we agree to take care of older ones.

I think I am lucky with this float policy. Our census is still so low, so I will probably orient to PICU tomorrow. Today I was in post-partum just caring for 2 babies...way too quiet for me.

[prmenrs, RN]

I work post-partum--just babies (and breast feeding!)

I used to float to PICU, occassionally peds, also just supposed to take care of babies, but that didn't always work out. I tried to be flexible. Staff in PICU was always very supportive, so I didn't mind.

[BittyBabyGrower, MSN, RN]

We only float to nursery.

[hikernurse]

I work in a children's hospital and we pretty much have to float anywhere we're needed. They try to give us babies, but that doesn't always happen. At this time, we're way understaffed, so nobody is floating out, but some are floating in--and most nurses who do find it a rather tough unit to float to. The nurses are really nice and helpful, but caring for the babies is a bit overwhelming if you're used to a more stable (not to mention bigger, LOL) patient.

[SteveNNP, MSN, NP]

We are supposed to float to PICU and Well baby as needed, but it's very rare.

[georgiagalRN]

We float to mother/baby and NBN. But perdiems float first. Then we have a rotation list between full time and part-time staff.

[brissie]

We don't have a peds service at our hospital, technically we can float to Mother-Baby and L&D but I have no idea what I would do if floated to L&D except hide.