liability and flu epidemic

[oramar]

Just wondering what my personel liability might be during this epidemic in certain cases. I am talking about the situation where MD orders a patient in CHFor other crisis(secondary to flu) to be sent to stepdown or ICU and beds are not availble. Only tubed patients are currently going to be ICU and telemetry beds are tight. In some cases we were able to get monitored beds but in some cases we are just nursing them through it on rehab. Of course the physician is kept informed of the entire situation. Right now sending them to another facility is not an option because they are calling us and begging for beds. Take for instance in one case I was informed there was a ICU bed and then it was cancelled because a 36 year old with ARDS was being brought in from another hospital. We have a 1 to between 8 and 13 patient to nurse ratio on rehab. You should see the magnificent job we are doing we are doing under the circumstances. I document very carefull but I wonder how the situation will look in court.