Survey: With the current nursing shortage, do you feel that patient care is compromis

Nurses General Nursing

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This months survey question:

With the current nursing shortage, do you feel that patient care is compromised at your facility?

Here are the results out of 1931 nurses surveyed

Yes 87.99 %

No 12.01 %

Please reply to this post and give us your more detailed responses.

[ June 17, 2001: Message edited by: bshort ]

There are many exscuses for the current nursing shortage but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know it is ALL about money. Two of my children, high school graduates only, make more than most nurses working as front desk receptionists M-F at high tech companies that offer full benefits at no cost, stock options, on-site daycare and free happy hour on Friday's. :eek:

the only reason i checked no on the survey is because it is not the nursing shortage that has caused our patients not to get better care it is the fact that our administration cut our nurse patient ratios. we have nurses wanting full time positions and also nurses being called off because our numbers have been cut drastically since i started at this hospital 10 years ago.

Originally posted by nanablue2:

There are many exscuses for the current nursing shortage but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know it is ALL about money. Two of my children, high school graduates only, make more than most nurses working as front desk receptionists M-F at high tech companies that offer full benefits at no cost, stock options, on-site daycare and free happy hour on Friday's. :eek:

:D DANG--where are those jobs????just kidding, but if the nation wants to get more nurses into school---graduated and working., They pay needs to be WAY up--supported mandatorily by state and fed...this is the only way.Any ideas on how to start ball rolling to gov and state on this? :cool:

I work in the lowest paid nursing home in our county. We have always been short on help, so it's no drastic change. The nurses get treated like crap and work their butts off. Anyways, I believe the residents aren't getting the proper care they deserve. We had to leave a nurse go because she was abusing the residents. Sad to say, but they are getting so stressed out that they do this to the residents. It makes me sick. The heads won't call any agencies so we can atleast get some help because that is how cheap they are.

It's sad to think what the future is going to be like. Will there be any nursing homes left for the next generation? :confused:

Originally posted by bshort:

This months survey question:

With the current nursing shortage, do you feel that patient care is compromised at your facility?

Please take a minute to answer our yes or no survey at the bottom of the allnurses.com homepage

Please reply to this post and give us your more detailed responses.

Compromised patient care generally falls into the realm of "adverse events". Look in your facilities and check to see how many patients are experiencing falls, how many nosocomial infections (pneumonia, phlebitis, wound infections, etc) are cropping up, how many patients are readmitted because they were not compliant, check out your facility motality rate, the rate of secondary complications occurring, the rate (not the number) of medication errors reported (under reporting is about 30-40%), the increase in ventilator days, pressure sores/decubitus ulcers (not a very good indicator anymore since most patients are not in the hospital long enough to develop them), success rate of appropriate documentation by nurses and nurse satisfaction. Patient satisfaction is a fair indicator, but most patients are well satisfied if they get out alive and in better shape than they came in.

Just some concrete thoughts for you to think about.

regards to all

chas

Specializes in ER, PACU, OR.

I cannot speak for the ER, because we have not had problems with our staffing, as well as getting help. Inside the hospital, there is always CCU/ICU/RNF/tele bed openings. Currently, there are three openings in the ER d/t increased census, and additional rooms added.

I will let ya know what happens!

:) Rick

I have seen on the unit I am on now, IMCU and previous unit (gnl floor), that there is no flex in staffing depending on acuity of patients-- it is by the numbers allowed- nurse/patient ratio per hospital policy. Now when JCAHO is going through, let me tell ya, we all feel like we are over staffing because we finally have time to give care on a more personal level rather than putting out fires. So many times we send patients out to the units and you know they can't watch as close as they may need, which means they will be back. We have done a lot of mandates, voluntary doubles on our unit and nurses call in sick due to burn out and needing a mental health day off. The floors are even worse. I know we all give our patients the best we can, that is why we are in this business, but after enough crazy shifts, doubles; we all also know it affects the care we give, the time and information we give with teaching to the patient and the family, and I could go on and on. But if JCAHO could only visit more often, wow, staffing would finally allow a little more time with patient care, be it emotional support, back rubs, or in general completing what needs to be completed in one shift. NOw I didn't even mention the paperwork!!!!!!!!!!

Compromised? Yu bet--and I can sum up management's response to the situation in one sad little story. Working days on a busy L&D--they transfered 2 very sick ante-partums in, reaquired almost 1 on 1--not near enough staff, very scary. Worked my butt off making sure we had extra help for the next shift, so they wouldn't be in our position, then E-Mailed the nurse manager to let her know the situation and how I covered it. Her reply? "If you had enough time to E-Mail, then you could not have been short of help." I left 2 weeks later--somebody is going to die there, and I don't want my name on their chart!!! Most nurses working 4-6 12 hour shifts per week, because nurse-manager refuses to fill FTE's (not even interviewing--)No breaks, no meals, no nothing--except management who says we are not "team players" if we dont'work 50-60 hours a week. I will NEVER go back to a hospital--waiting tables would be better.

How about sending the results of the poll to several different organizations?

Like: The American Hospital Association

The American Medical Association

The Associated Press

AARP

Congress

etc!!!! ;)

I work in Critical Care and it is nothing to come to work and have at least 3 patients, sometimes four or five CRITICAL CARE patients. Yes, this includes, vents, IABPS, etc., etc. Most days, I leave work feeling like I need to be taken care of. And are my patients cared for? To the best of my ability, that's all that I can say. Yes, the nursing shortage is dramatically risking patient care. The hospital that I work for will not consider LPN or CNA's to assist in the critical care areas, so the RN's have TOTAL care of the patients that we are assigned. Being a charge nurse and having to assign co-workers with this crap makes you feel even better about being a nurse. :(

:eek: :( If you go up to the topic, "Doctors Find Out About the Nursing Shortage" you will see a post by Charles Smith that says that a non telemetry trained agency nurse was pulled to telemetry. Apparently this nurse failed to recognize a sever brady situation and a patient died. I did not personally witness this but when I was still working on telemetry an ICU nurse told me that a patient had suffered series of mishaps that resulted in a his death while in ICU. There was a lawsuit and when the hospital reviewed their records they realized the patient had not had one single ICU nurse assigned to him in the week preceding his death. Managment was apparently shaking in their boots over the situation. I was lucky I was not one of them because by that time I had started to rebel and was refusing to go to ICU when they tried to pull me there. The reason I asked the ICU nurse what was going on was that I had noticed they had suddenly stopped pulling non ICU nurses to ICU. Do you know that from the moment managment decided it was time to stop pulling to ICU from telementry and med/surg because they feared lawsuits they always managed to find an ICU nurse somewhere. Up until that point they had always protested it was not possible to find one and that was the reason they had to pull. So anyway, the answer to the question is Yes, patient safety is being compromised.

For the past four years I have administered healthcare services to a population of 26,000 employees plus their families. The number one cause of death, disability, and healthcare cost for this group is medical, nursing, and pharmacist error. In the four years I have been with this employer, I haven’t seen a change in rates. I don’t have enough information to determine how many of these cases are due to staff shortages. I do know that many of the pharmacy errors are due to staff shortages.

I am aware of only one specific case involving the nursing shortage with a very bad outcome. A kidney transplant was recently cancelled because there were not enough scrub nurses available to hold the operation. The organ went to another recipient in a different state.

If I become aware of a participant selecting care that will require hospitalization, I make the following recommendations:

1. Ask the hospital what the patient nurse ratio is for each unit you will be in. (I explain to them how many different units they could be in based on their diagnosis and procedure to be done.)

2. What are the training levels of the nurses who will be caring for you?

3. Identify at least two friends or relatives who can act as your DPOA and will be able to stay with you the entire time you are hospitalized.

4. If you can not locate friends or family members please hire private duty RN’s. (And I do recommend if necessary they borrow the money from their retirement programs if necessary.)

5. If a participant is hospitalized with one of our “top ten” diagnosis or a rare disease, I will do a visit without notice. I am still finding hospitalized participants in untreated acute distress in 50% of the time.

6. I do track good outcomes and recommend those facilities to other participants.

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