Looking for a hospital with units that have multiple levels of acuity

[nurse nancy k]

Does anyone work in a hospital that has a unit which has everything from open heart recovery to "floor" patients? Our unit has admissions, discharges, open heart pre-op and post-op, vascular surgery patients, stroke, amputations, thoracotomies, and med/surg patients. This unit has a total of 27 beds divided into 3 sections. We are trying to find a unit that is similar and get some help with how to staff with all the variables that happen on a daily basis. We have gone from a 10 bed unit in a small area to this 27 bed unit that is housed in a huge area. Any help would be appreciated. I think I may be posting this in the wrong area. Any help with that would be appreciated also.

[ocean waves]

Hello. Yep, I have worked in a small hospital in which there was a huge variety of "floor patients" and complex "post op patients". Regarding your question of "how to staff with the variables", that is a tough one. In general, smaller hospitals do not usually have sufficient budgets to hire and orient a big range of professional nurses to handle each speciality or level of patient care. One option regarding safe staffing planning might be to call your state board of nursing and ask about recommended guidelines and advice. In my case, after a year of worry about not feeling fully prepared to meet the mind blowing variety of patient needs (and worry about protecting my nursing license), I submitted a professional resignation and moved on to a much bigger hospital--at that larger facility there were many more specialty staff members for patient needs and for helpful use as nursing resources. Best wishes!

[ZippyGBR, BSN, RN]

As a regional Spinal injuries unit we have the full range of patients from new acutes or newly post op following big sore repairs / urology/ intrathecal pump insertions through to the independant very near the end of their rehab Paraplegics and when our HDU is fully up and running we'll be able to take none invasive ventilated patients and other level 2 critical care for our patient group- whether that's mask or trache ( we already take patients with tracheostomies who don't need ventilatory support ...), so once that its in place we'll have everything from level 2 critical care to sub-acute ( they are with us for intensive physio mainly )