Intentionally understaffed with a charge out of staffing, is this normal now?!?

[Aloe_sky]

I’m becoming more and more negative when I walk into work. I love being a nurse and I love working in the ICU, the problem is my unit is INTENTIONALLY short, the whole hospital for that matter. When we want to pick up shifts there are only specific days and we are pulled to the regular floor where we are taking care of 6 floor patients. 

In the ICU now we are required to care for 3 patients no matter the acuity of the patients. We aren’t offered a bonus to come in and if we request to work on days we know we can ease the load in the ICU, we are told we are not needed, if we were scheduled for overtime on those days the ICU has 3 patients each, even with no open bed we are cancelled. 

I'm use to having a code bed open at my last facility, now we “trade out”. 

What also gets on my last nerves is a charge out of staffing, we do not have a rapid response team so the ICU charge out of staffing attends those which are very few. During a rapid response a provider and the RN house supervisor goes also. They NEVER intubate on the floor and they delegate floor nurses to pull meds, since the charge nurse doesn’t have access to the floors medication room. The floor nurse receives a verbal order to give meds so really what is the charge out of staffing needed for? 

I'm told “just in case” the provider isn’t able to go, which in over 1 year has NEVER happened!

I refuse to be charge because I could never just sit there looking at the internet for 12 hours while the other nurses are carrying an extra load. 

These charges are no resources to me, NONE of them help me in anyway and the new nurses that volunteer to be charge, have never worked anywhere before this facility and still ask me for help since I am one of the most experienced. 

The providers are for the most part always on the unit so they are there to answer any questions.

It would be more beneficial for the staff if the charge nurses has to take patients before any nurse is tripled. 1 senior charge nurse always threatens to quit or walk out if we are super short and she has to take a patient. 1 night charge was mad because we were all tripled and he had to take a STEMI patient and said next time he will go home. This has created a toxic environment.

One nurse is “so sweet” because when she’s charge she organizes our patients room, as if I care about that! 

I’m so sick of them getting away with not having to do anything and I’m so sick of the extra load, it’s just weighing on me mentally.

I'm wondering is this the new norm now in hospitals?!?

Are nurses out of staffing common in other hospitals when nurses are short staffed???

[Aloe_sky]

On 10/27/2022 at 3:01 AM, JKL33 said:

You could always choose to accept charge assignment and then keep things well organized and actively help others. You could choose to take an assignment or partial assignment if you think that's the way it should be, or find other things that aren't being done and address those problems if there is extra time; go ahead and raise the bar if you feel there is a problem. That would also mean that at least some of the time one of these other nurses whom you feel are abusing the position would have to be in an assignment while you're in charge. Sounds like good times, I say go for it. 

Typically charge nurses doing what they are supposed to be doing is not as easy as it sounds. Your place has poor management of this situation.

The main answer to that is to not pick up. Sounds like they don't want to give anything in return for having their needs met.

There are certain problems or certain points in time where you realize that others aren't going to change things. It really is up to you to change yourself, change what you accept, change what you do, change something. I would say both of the problems you have mentioned will require this.

It's your choice - you can either just say that what others are doing isn't fair, or you can do the charge role and highlight the discrepancy by doing a good job, then go home and sleep well at night.

With staffing, if you're tired of picking up or tired of the staffing being jerked around, make your decisions accordingly; don't pick up if it isn't worth it to you. If you're tired of working short and there's no end in sight then consider your other options.

I realize this sounds kind of brusque but I learned somewhat the hard way that others didn't care about the things I did and I wasted a LOT of valuable life being upset about it, when all along the right answer was just for ME to make an actual move.

Good luck.

Sorry for the late response, that would be nice however we have full time charge nurses and part time charge nurses. It’s not, one day the pick and choose who to be charge, even the job posting is specific to being a charge nurse so it is a whole different position. 
 

it’s a hospital culture here that charge nurses don’t have patients, from management to the charge nurses, they believe a charge nurse as a “resource nurse” is better for the unit. 
 

I under what you are saying and it really isn’t worth fighting about. It is what it is.