How does Safe Harbor work??

[rainbowsandsunshine]

Lately at work, I have been very worried about our staffing ratios and the difficulty of caring for so many patients. These concerns have fallen on deaf ears with my supervisors. I was looking at the BON website and it talked about Safe Harbor... but the descriptions were pretty vague. Can somebody tell me (Step by step) what happens when you request safe harbor?

[LegzRN]

I did a google search and found how to request a safe harbor in texas... but no such luck for your state, TN

http://www.bon.texas.gov/practice/pdfs/SHPR-CompRequest.pdf

[JDougRN, BSN, RN]

Most places have something similar- Ours is called an ADO- Assignment Despite Objection. It is a paper we fill out and send to management when we have one of "those" shifts. I basically says we felt we were understaffed or in some other way asked by our employer to have an assignment that we didn't feel safe taking, but that we agreed to do the best we could. It gives us a safety blanket, so if something does go wrong, we have a record saying we TRIED to argue for better staffing , but had to just "Do the best we could"

[martymoose, BSN, RN]

I doubt any of these would hold up if we got sued, would they?

[FLArn]

I did a cursory internet search asking "Does Safe Harbor really protect nurses?" From what I found it appears that while Safe Harbor does protect nurses from retaliation from employers or actions by the BON it does NOT protect you in court in civil suits. So basically it could help protect your job and license but it won't help you if you are sued by a patient or family if something adverse happens because of the unsafe conditions.

[Batman25]

I doubt any of these would hold up if we got sued, would they?

No, it wouldn't. A lawyer would have a field day. We were always taught to flat out refuse the assignment if we felt we couldn't provide safe care and our license was potentially at risk.

[martymoose, BSN, RN]

And this is why employers can take advantage of us- they know in this day and age no one is just going to walk off their job due to a dangerous assignment.The odds of finding another job are nil in this economy. Hmmm, refuse assignment, lose job. Take risk of never getting another job vs risk of bad assignment and being sued. hmmm nice decisions.