Liablity question..

If the nurse who left did not hand over patient care to another licensed nurse then she abandoned her patients. Saying can you feed my baby at 1400 is not handing over patient care. Did you contact your charge nurse about this?

I say it as possible abandonment, but she came in for extra hours, and it was a scheduled 6 hrs. But the next shift change wasn't till 3, and the nurse wasn't there till almost 4. Luckily my baby didn't have NEC, but we still didn't know what was going on. I didn't have time to take care of 2 more, I think the other nurse could have, but she still had a vent baby... I'm just thankful that nothing happened.

Wow, that's terrible!

Is the charge nurse an idiot?!

Sorry, but if it was a scheduled 6 hour shift, then the charge nurse must have known that, and therefore knew what would have been done with the 6-hour shift nurse's assignment.

I wonder sometimes, but I think the charge nurse also had an assignment. I'm liking the unit, and the hospital, but the staffing is horrible right now. I was part of a fairly large intern group, and we lost about the same number of experienced nurses as interns....That scares me.

Whenever you get this type of situation filed an incident report and send it to risk management dept via fax or intradepartament mail,not e mail do not give to any body just send it to risk management dept explaining the situation ,if anything happens you will be covered and the hospital responsable for short staff

Ex:In your unit you must have and incident report paper work with a number

write everything they asked or stick the patients name label and medical record number ,incident you should mark unit short of staff ,then explained the situation .You need to send it within 3 days of the event,that should help in malpractice law suit to cover your licence ,make sure you always write if you call your supervisor or manager for help and write their names and answers.You need to sighn it with your co-worker as a witness.Incident report are to help you to have a cove up in your liability if you are concerned with some of your practice.Some managers thinks it is a punished to them from the staff nurse.

EX :I had a similar case in the ER in dicember we were short 3 nurses 17 beds I closed 4 rooms and call every staff to help at home to come to work if possible no body to help,call my supervisor ,the manager,and the upper levels no help.Medicaid audited a pts chart that day, a pt had fever it took us 1 hour to give the baby 3 months tylenol because we were in the trauma room .The risk management came to the unit 2 weeks latter and we had a meeting with our manager I told her I did file an incident report about that case to your dept gave the number which I kept in my house file and case closed I was dismissed from the meeting.No problem for me we got 4 more nurses hired in the unit within 2 months .Full staff now with needed list for xtra hours if anybody wants overtime.

JCAHO does NOT look kindly on nurses leaving a written report and taking off. Not cool at all.

JCAHO does NOT look kindly on nurses leaving a written report and taking off. Not cool at all.

Yeah I didn't think it was too cool myself. I was more irritated than anything. But the shift was survived with nothing bad happening, so I have that to be thankful for!

If the charge nurse knew that this nurse was leaving, then she is responsible for her assignment. If we have to leave early, we report off to the charge nurse and leave a written report. If the oncoming nurse has any questions, she phones the other nurse.