"A nurse is a nurse"

[RNKitty]

Are you expected to float throughout the hospital, regardless of your training and background? I left a hospital last year that would float nurses, and expect them to do assessments and pass meds anywhere in the hospital. Since I am an OB nurse, and it has been 5 years since I have seen a med/surg patient, I was horrified when they sent me to ER and ICU. Those areas, as well as OB, require specific training, often months or years to become proficient in the the specialty. Managements attitude was one of "You're an RN, you should know this."

I resigned when I was left as the only labor nurse in the hospital with 4 labor patients. Not even the supervisor was qualified to assist with deliveries or do neonatal resus. What a danger to the patients!!!

Has anyone else encountered this floating policy? It seems insulting to the nurse, and dangerous to all, to expect a nurse to function outside of her training.

[peter73]

my two cents on this subject,

a specialty in nursing is like a specialty in medicine...

after all if you don't use it you loose it. I know I would panic if I had to deal with ICU, burns, L&D etc. I had rotations in these in school but, that was a long time ago, and I have not needed to palpate a fundus or read/run monitors for years...I would be so unsafe I would be scared to take patients.

I never understood why in this profession a nurse is a nurse and in medicine a MD is not an MD!?!

Come to think of it I may enjoy seeing the faces of a psychiatrist floated to peds, or a gynocologist floated to a burn unit. Then be the one to say, Your a doctor you should know this. You had a rotaion in this 10 years ago, remember. It is just like what you do every day in (what ever specialty), . . . isn't it?

Nurses, contrary to popular belief are not interchangable coggs in the health care machine. We all play a specific role, developing specialized skills to deliver the highest quality of care to the niche we serve. The skills that are not appropriate or not benificial to our patients are forgotten and replaced with highly adapted skills for our particular specialty.

I look forward to the day nurses are given the same respect as other highly educated and specialized professionals.

peter

[mother/babyRN, RN]

They send us all over the place too..It is all about poor staffing and saving money, sadly...And, surprisingly, at our facility their view is that the OB nurses are the most cross trained of all, since we have to incorporate icu skills along with the OB, OR, triage, GYN and recovery, not to mention the nursery and pedi, which we are also a part of.....I hate it...Funny, never have seen one single soul beyond those I already work with who EVER comes to delivery.....

[KC CHICK]

I've only been floated a few times....probly due to the fact that I work on the 'normally busiest' floor in our hospital. So far I've floated on Ortho, Express Admit, and Neuro. Would work post-partum if it was necessary. It's not like I'd be the only nurse on the floor...I am still capable of asking questions.

I do miss my tele monitors when I float...wish I could take 'em with me.

Anne:D

[shodobe]

To my knowledge the only place and I mean the ONLY place that any nurse in the hospital could not float to is the OR!. Face it, how many of you could come into the OR and be told to scrub or circulate a, let's say a aorto- bifem bypass? We only float as a policy to the OB department and this is only when they can't handle a dificult C/section. Even with all my years as a nurse I still wouldn't go anywhere that I did not feel comfortable. I will go and help anybody anywhere that needs it, but I won't stay forever. The OR is a world all in it's self that most nurses have very little knowledge and it would be extremely unfair to send them to the depths of hell just for a warm body. I would suffer myself, in silence of course, before I would subject anyone without at least 2 years experience to the surgeons. It isn't a pretty picture too say the least. In closing, don't except any assignment your'e not comfortable with. It's your liscense yuo are protecting. Mike

[KC CHICK]

I totally agree with you on that Mike!! More like a different Galaxy.

It took me nine months to learn how to circulate all areas...I don't think a floor nurse could figure it out in a few mintues.

[fergus51]

Hah Mike! I got floated to the OR because I can scrub for c-sections (I am an OB nurse)! Then they wanted me to work on all these ortho cases... You should have seen the look on the supervisors face when I said I wouldn't scrub for them! I don't know why the regular OR nurse wanted me to scrub as opposed to her....

[RNforLongTime]

Well, I'm an ICU nurse now and we are expected to float to the floors and take a typical pt assignment, which on night shift means about 10-12 pt's. This doesn't happen too often as we are short on RN's to begin with and currently have 4 travelers working in our unit. I've asked to shadow an experienced floor RN on a night when census is down as I've worked med-surg before but I have no idea how they do their charting on the floors at this facility. I've been floated but only to MICU. I work in SICU/CCU.

As far as me working OB? I don't know nuthin bout birthin no babies!

[Tweety, BSN, RN]

We float within our areas. OB & Women's surgery doesn't ever have to float outside of OB and Women's. They float amonst themsevles for instance the Mother-Baby unit is expected to float to antepartum when necessary and visa versa.

Med-Surg, PCU and Rehab float amongst each other.

ICU floats amongst themselves, unless they are on-call they don't have to get called in to float to another unit.

ER never floats and we never float to ER, unless they are holding floor patients that don't have a bed. We float down there to take care of those patients, but not ER patients.

[caroladybelle, BSN, RN]

Or as bad, when inappropriate patients get placed on your floor.

Recently, a fresh postop pericardial window got sent to med surg level onco floor. Full code - on remote telemetry-w/many IV push cardiac meds. The order was if the pt could be extubated, he could come to the floor.

Also, a esophagastrectomy. One night, the pt starts to crash, I call the surgeon on call. On call surgeon reams me out on the floor, about why in the h>?l the patient is on a med/surg floor. Excuse me??? Your partner put him on my floor.

Do these guys have a brain when they place the pts?????

[flashpoint]

I work ER and I get floated to med/surg on occasion. A lot of the m/s nurses seem to forget that I don't work there a lot and that most of the time when I do work there, I just do things like vitals, prns, baths, beds, etc. I'm very organized, but it's hard to do primary care for 8-10 patients when you don't do it on a regualr basis and I forget a lot of the routine things like which doctors want their vitals when and which doctors don't want SpO2 checked on all of their patients. I am competent as a nurse, but I can't be expected to function as well as a nurse who works the unit on a regular basis. I certainly don't expect them to be fully functional in ER!

[imenid37]

one time about 7-8 years ago, i was told to make every effort to come to work as i was very much needed on my unit (post partum). i worked per diem. i got a ride to work arranged by the hospital. yeah i was needed alright. i was floated to a med-surg floor and given 12 pts. to care for. the regular staff nurses were rude to put it mildly. asked well what can you do? they had residents at the time. we did not, so i had to ask for help when calling the dr. about my pt. who happened to be in pulmonary edema. i even had one aide ask me why i needed her help when she just saw me sitting. (i was charting). to top it all off when giving report, one sunshine of a soul asked me why i did not get a urine on an incontinent pt. i told her i was too stupid to do it and it would have to be her pleasure. it was unreal. i told the manager i would never come in again and float to the floor as an rn. ths institution is experiencing an extreme nursing shortage right now. about 1/2 of their staff are agency/travellers and at one time they were one of the few hospitals who used no outside agencies. that's a hard one to figure out. now isn't it?

i don't mind na duities where i clean up poop,pee, vomit, do vs, and accu-check, but no way will i ever take on an assignment i am not qualified for. my current employer floats you as na. you do the tech stuff and pts. are assigned to someone qualified to care for them. when med-surg nurses come to our floor they do n/a duties or take care of gyn pts. we would never expect them to work nursery or care for a mom during delivery, etc. not fair to the nurse or the pt. that going to the or stuff is outrageous fergus.