Long story short here...Census has been low on our adult medical unit for around 1 year. Pediatric's census is up and down, so they've been bumped from floor to floor. Now, they're with us, and possibly will stay.
Peds nurses are being crossed trained to recover heart cath and stent patients. The peds nurses on the floor are doing all that they can to take care of the kiddos. This means that the peds nurse is taking care of anywhere from 3 to 12 or more patients. Many of them have taken care of adults, and chose to take adult patients if their census is low.
I (and most of my peers) have never taken care of peds patients. We have not had orientation to peds, nor do we have the experience to take peds patients. At this point, we are expected to take peds patients prn and when peds does not have an RN scheduled (mostly at night) to be the charge nurse and do admin assess for both peds and adults.
At this time, I'm the only nurse that seems to have an objection to this. The others have been at the job longer and have more experience. Their attitude seems to be resigned.
I spoke with my manager about my concerns. I said that I believed that this was a safety issue for peds as well as adult patients. I was told not to say anything because the CNO was looking at saving jobs, and that I could "take the pull" (float to another floor) if I wanted to avoid working in this situation. (That got me taking 6 different patients on 3 different floors in a 12 hour shift.)
Am I missing something here? Please tell me that it's not like this everywhere. I like hospital nursing, but I need something else...
