Help! LTC laws and ratios

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Hey all. Does anyone know the LTC nurse to patient ratio in ohio?

also can you put your license in jeaopardy if you refuse to take two assignments?

example: 1 unit with 48 residents and two nurses/two med carts/two teams/two assignments. But i only accept 1 assignment and count with one nurse.

is that ok? DON said Noooooooo:nono:

sometimes ya just need some help ya know:rolleyes:

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Specializes in Cardiac, Med-Surg, ICU.
Hey all. Does anyone know the LTC nurse to patient ratio in ohio?

also can you put your license in jeaopardy if you refuse to take two assignments?

example: 1 unit with 48 residents and two nurses/two med carts/two teams/two assignments. But i only accept 1 assignment and count with one nurse.

is that ok? DON said Noooooooo:nono:

sometimes ya just need some help ya know:rolleyes:

As to your first question, to date and as far as I know, there are no mandatory nurse:patient ratios in the state of Ohio. Not for LTC, nor acute care. Someone please correct me if I am wrong about this.

As to your second question, the answer is not as clear. If you accept the assignment and make a detrimental error, yes your license may very well be in jeopardy, dependent on the circumstances. On the other hand, you must be cautious when refusing an assignment, it could be construed as abandonment and/or insubordination, dependent on your facility policy.

Unfortunately, nurses are too often put in the middle of this predicament, and both the nurse and patients suffer as a result.

In any case, you may want to contact the Board, they might be able to help you. I know a nurse that contacted an attorney when her facility was trying to tell nurses that they could take up to 10 patients (this was on a hospital telemetry unit) when the unit standard was limited to 6 patients per nurse. Unfortunately, this was kind of an unwritten rule, so the supervisor had no qualms about bending this "rule". The attorney advised her to take no more than 6 patients. This made other nurses very angry, but they could have done the same thing. Sometimes you have to stand up for yourself and your patients.

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There are no LTC ratios in OH or any other state. The only ratios that are mandated by law are for acute care hospitals. The laws are on the books in California and a handful of other states that I can't recall.

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http://www.nccnhr.org/uploads/HarringtonStatestaffingtableRevisedJan2008.pdf

You can look up Ohio in this nation wide staffing table for LTC.

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If you need to refuse an assignment, make the reason clear and document it somewhere and make sure you have a copy. Maybe this will help.

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