Has your hospital closed the floor for low census?

Nurses General Nursing

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Specializes in Surgical.

Our hospital closed our surgical floor to admissions on Thursday. The rationale was that they anticipated a decreased census because of the holiday. We joined our Orthopedics wing on Friday afternoon bringing 10 patients with us. Crazy thing is that we now have 15 of our patients and surgical patients are all over the hospital including adults with abdominal pain admitted to the pediatric unit. Anything like this ever happen where you work?

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Specializes in MICU for 4 years, now PICU for 3 years!.

I work in a very special unit, it's called the hospital transfer unit. We take patients into our unit from outside hospitals that need to come to our hospital, but the specific type of bed they need is not available. We function as an ICU, Med/Surg, Tele, step-down, etc, everything but Peds.

Last December, around the holidays, our unit did close, but that was because the hospital census was in the 70%ish range, and our unit was not needed. All hospital admits went directly to the floor they needed to go to.

Our nurses either took PTO or floated to another unit. Most nurses floated to the ED, because our unit at one time was part of the ED. I was still very new and took PTO.

Today, Labor Day, they called a bunch of nurses off. I was supposed to work 11-2330, but as of 0830, there were 4 nurses, 6 patients, and the hospital census was about 80%, so I did not need to go in. Since last Christmas, I don't think our unit has closed, but I can see it happening again soon.

Sorry your patients were all over the place... that sounds dangerous to have adult patients in the peds area.... I wouldn't want to be those patients or nurses!

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Specializes in Med/Surge, Psych, LTC, Home Health.

Yes.... the hospital where I used to work had a general medical floor and a surgical floor that took overflow from the medical floor, as well as peds and oncology. I worked on the surgical floor; it tended to close somewhat frequently during the summer months. If the census on that floor got down to around 10 or so, and the hospital wasn't anticipating a huge influx of patients, taking into consideration the season and recent trends... the floor would close and surgical patients would move to the general medical floor.

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Only in my sweetest of dreams. No, when our census drops low, it's still enough to NOT be able to put them anywhere else. Our unit, while med-surg, is still specific for surgical patients and it just doesn't close down. Besides, when I HAVE seen the census drop to happy-happy numbers, you can bet your butt we're about to be slammed with admissions!

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Specializes in Emergency.

Yes, due to low census our med/ surg floor has been closed for most of the summer. We then combined our M/S patients with the tele patients on another floor. Because of this, the nurses that have been working are frequently out of ratio and we have been holding admitted patients in the ER.

Now that we will soon open the closed floor, I just hope that we will be able to get back all those nurses that haven't been working all summer.

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Specializes in SICU, EMS, Home Health, School Nursing.

My unit has never closed... even if we only have 1 patient, we can't close our doors. They have been known to close the CCU though. I work in the SICU and since we are a trauma hospital, they always have to have the SICU open and staffed due to we are the ones that get all the neuro and trauma patients.

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Yes, due to low census our med/ surg floor has been closed for most of the summer. We then combined our M/S patients with the tele patients on another floor. Because of this, the nurses that have been working are frequently out of ratio and we have been holding admitted patients in the ER.

Now that we will soon open the closed floor, I just hope that we will be able to get back all those nurses that haven't been working all summer.

Holy cow! I wish we could have borrowed those out of work nurses all summer! We spent most of it swamped and understaffed. Go figure.

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Specializes in Psychiatric.

If our floors dropped below a certain census, the units would consolidate patients and close last year, but it was determined that was not 'cost effective'...and yes, adult patients were put on the peds unit!!

I, being the lowest on the seniority list (the place is unionized), was either called off or floated EVERY DAY for 2 months...

*sigh* only one more reason I'm out job-hunting again!! lol

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Specializes in ORTHOPAEDICS-CERTIFIED SINCE 89.

Yes back in '93 when the health initiative the Clintons proposed, our floor got down to 3 patients.

But we had almost all certified RNs. The other end was chosen to be closed and we got their certified RNs and all the patients.

They lost their unit and the doors were actually chained and padlocked-a little overkill.

Then about 6 months later, TPTB decided it would be an overflow unit and if patients came in we would go over there and take care. The problem was there was no call system there, no pyxis, no code cart etc. That idea lasted about a week and fortunately we never had to utilize it. Then TPTB decided to close 2 entire units on another floor and make it offices, and them moved the remaining nurses to the locked floor and dispersed the rest all over the house. I will never understand clipboard hospital managers.

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Specializes in Telemetry, Oncology, Progressive Care.

Yep we have had units close. Where I work there are 4 tele units. One of the tele units is a surgical stepdown tele and the other 3 tele units are medical stepdown tele. This summer we have closed one of our tele units somewhat frequently. It is a bit of a pain to close and then to reopen up a few days later. Definitely around the holidays it will close because somehow patients get well for the holiday and want to go home. I do not know if they have ever closed our surgical floor. They have closed one of the medical units which has been closed for most of the summer. To my knowledge they have never closed either of our ICU units. Right now we are so busy our ICUs are actually getting tele overflow patients. Census will probably be picking up now with the fall and winter coming. I expect some units to be closed again around thanksgiving and christmas.

Kelly

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yes esp around Christmas and new years when most pt will put off any surgery off that is not an absolute emergency

with closed unts there was a wierd shifting of patients ob/gyn could not be closed but there were some non infecteous pts put in there same with pedi not closed but adults deemed to be safe, mvas etc were put in there until more floors could be opened..most nurses were happy to be off then..they usually had their shopping done and could concentrate on cooking and visitors

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our hospital has been running a very low census- we were a total of 19 pts in the entire hospital including er. were not a small city-there is 7 hospitals in our city.

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