Strong Medicine....

[CseMgr1, ASN, RN]

I just finished watching the series "Strong Medicine" on Lifetime Television. Tonight's episode gave a disturbing testimonial on the plight of today's hospitals: critical understaffing, which caused the death of a patient (of course, the hospital administrators pointed therir fingers at the poor float nurse, who wasn't familiar with the IV administration set she was using, and the patient died from fluid overload). Have any of you had this to happen to you? I've come close..and it is scary.

[sharann, BSN, RN]

What disturbed me was the statistic quoted by the chief of staff, saying that if enough nurses were hired they would take a major percent (I think it was 46%) of the hospital budget. He was upset by this figure. Well, no duh. If there are more nurses working for the hospital...why shouldn't we take a potion of the budget to keep the hospital running? Of course, the strike was over in less than a day. This is T.V!

[fedupnurse]

I don't watch that show (is it any good?) but I am forever completing Unsafe Staffing forms due to a poor staff mix and number in my unit. The suits don't get it and never will. If they continue to count in all the exec that have RN after their names then yes Nsg will account for a large percent of the budget. Take out the exec, managers, clin specs, infection control, case managers, etc. Just count those of us at the bedside then you will have a much smaller percentage of actual hands on nurses at the bedside. Also they should be required to tell the public the truth about the REAL number of direct care RN's instead of adding in those who do not provide direct patient care.

There are cases out there where nurses have produced documentation that they notified adminstration about unsafe staffing and their names were removed from lawsuits.

Name of the game: Cover your own @ss because the suits couldn't care less about you or your patients. They wil point the finger at you every time.

Good luck!