warm bodies for staffing

[jjjoy, LPN]

At one facility, a foreign nurse who had already got her US state license was "volunteering" while waiting for her work visa. It looked like the facility was using her license to round out their staffing some days even though she couldn't really do much until she was formally hired. I also suspected that this same facility used new grads still on orientation to meet legal staffing requirements. I'm not at all sure about this impression of mine. Was my imagination working overtime or has anyone else heard of such practice?

[fergus51]

I have experienced such practice as a student. While on a practicum I was given a full assignment while my preceptor was also given a full assignment.

[caroladybelle, BSN, RN]

This has happened at hospitals that I have worked.

And while many hospitals have parameters for staffing that they agree to abide, in the US, to my knowledge only California has those set in law. Most of the rest have the ever ambiguous "hospital must maintain adequate staffing mix appropriate for patient acuity" - some "bulldust" that permits them to staff however, the hospital feels is "appropriate".

As such there are no set in stone, legal parameters, in most places, for hospitals to "have to" meet.

[CseMgr1, ASN, RN]

Originally posted by fergus51

I have experienced such practice as a student. While on a practicum I was given a full assignment while my preceptor was also given a full assignment.

On our first day of clinicals in nursing school, we arrived on the floor with our instructor...only to find that the Charge Nurse had given us a full load of patients. Red-faced and furious, our instructor informed this woman in NO uncertain terms, that the ANA had outlawed the staffing of hospitals by nursing students back in 1965, and made her change our assignments to one apiece (we were only supposed to be on the floor until 10 AM, anyway).

The Charge Nurse could have cared less, since she had more "bodies" to take care of...than "bodies" available to care for.