Dangerous practices?

Nurses General Nursing

Published

So I never write things like this for the sake of my job. I'm a relatively newer nurse. I've been working a little over a year at a level 1 trauma center on an intermediate/stepdown unit. I'm also brand new to the charge nurse role. I feel like nothing is being done for our nurses and some of the things I'm seeing is disturbing-- It makes me never want to be a patient at my hospital.

-Our unit is so short staffed, it's almost guaranteed that when I'm charge I'll have patients. That or take 6-7 patients on an intermediate care unit with fresh trachs/transplants

-Corporate has done nothing to try to get nurses to stay/come work for us. All ideas are shot down. I'm a part of a committee at the hospital and I've been told that brand new nurses are being tracked upon hire-- but nothing other than that. No plans on how to keep these nurses so they won't leave after 6 months. The retention rate is horrible on many many units.

-This is the worst to me: Our 500 bed hospital just made some changes to how ED admissions works. Basically, whenever bed tower calls and charge doesn't answer (because you know, busy?), they're going to choose and post the patient to any clean/available room. If charge still doesn't call back in 15 minutes, they're going to send the patient anyway.

-Which brings me to another point-- it's amazing how the ED lies and forges vital signs to send patients up-- is this typical for every hospital?? We've actually seen when the nurse changed a HR from 36 to 68.

-The ED never calls for report. Like ever. Ever ever. It's my/the nurses job to look up this patient before they come up from the ED-- I know that this isn't typical and extremely dangerous in my opinion.

-At our last meeting, our supervisor basically laid blame on us for not being able to eat lunch because "we don't prioritize our time correctly"

I'm at the point where I don't know if I could or should leave because I would hate to screw my unit over because we're so short already. And if I did leave, I don't know where I would go.

It makes me want to scream, write a long letter to corporate, do something. I feel like we are not providing adequate patient care and patients are just being processed in and out like a bunch of groceries.

What are some things I can do??

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