LOW Census

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Specializes in NICU.

I was just wondering how everybody out there's census was doing lately.

My unit has overall been slow this year - and we have been really slow the past 3-4 months. So far for the year, our

Our census is down to about HALF our average. Our average - not our max. It's crazy. We are all getting downstaffed like crazy, using our vacation hours if we still want to get paid. We are floating to other units (peds under a year old, and newborn nursery), but it's still not enough. We staff for about 18 nurses each shift, and we have been working with around 11-13 nurses now for a long time.

The entire area (Chicagoland) has been slower as far as NICU is concerned, but still... it's getting a little crazy!

We all keep saying that we are glad that there are less sick / premature babies out there, however... we enjoy getting paid!

How are all of your units doing?

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We've been slammed in the coastal NC area. Short staffed and full. We have been transporting moms out of our hospital to area hospitals because we don't have the NICU staff to take care of their babies!

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Specializes in Neonatal ICU (Cardiothoracic).

Wow.

PM me your unit's address, and we'll mail you some patients. We have been hopping here in NYC. ECMOs, potential ECMOs, CDHs, postop cardiacs every day, multiple transports, twins out the wazoo.... and the list goes on. We went from 62 to 75 in two days. Our unit "holds" 58 pts. We've been needing 34-35 nurses and getting 28-29. In fact, the nursing office called me a total of 6 times since Friday to work OT. Not that I mind OT, it just seems like they never need it when I'm actually available.

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Specializes in NICU, PICU, PACU.

That's how we were early this year until early summer 60+ kids!...now we have the chronic after kids. Our census has been middle of the road for the past few months though.

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Specializes in NICU, Infection Control.

We were slow during the summer, busy lately--the September Baby Boom. ("Merry Christmas, honey") Be careful w/that eggnog!!

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Specializes in NICU.
We were slow during the summer, busy lately--the September Baby Boom. ("Merry Christmas, honey") Be careful w/that eggnog!!

lol

That's why we are usually really busy during the summer. All of those early "September" babies... but not this year. L&D has been full of term kids - good for the moms for keeping the babies in as long as they're supposed to... just not so good for us!

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Specializes in NICU.

We've been hopping too, got a later start than usual but been 100+ (80's is normal, 60's is low) consistently since July. Everybody is starting to get burnt out working so much OT plus it doesn't help that many of the kids are high acuity as well. High census + high acuity = high stress!!

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Currently we are running around our average with plenty of kids "cooking" in L&D, but we have been short a little more recently than had been in past. According to nurses who have been at my unit a long time, this happens periodically. Our dayshift is chronically short and you can easily pick-up a dayshift OT if you want. I think it must depend on the geographic area as to shortage/overage.

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Specializes in Nurse Scientist-Research.

In the last few months there was another hospital blocks away that opened a new fancy women's & infants tower with all kinds of fancy amenities and took a lot of the OB and healthy newborn business with it. Our unit was affected in that a year ago we were constantly having to close the unit due to high census and divert and transport babies out all the time. Since the "competition" opened we now stay at a comfortable level that we actually have enough staff to care for the infants and rarely close. The only staff cancellations have been for extra shifts and extra on-call shifts. I still get called every couple of weeks asking to work an extra shift, but not like before.

So, the answer is, our census is down, but only just enough to give us breathing room.

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Specializes in Level III NICU.

We were pretty slow July through mid-September. Like half of our usual census. We started picking up again, to the point where we aren't floating or giving people time off but we haven't really started up with OT yet. I'm waiting for the OT (unless nobody wants Christmas presents this year!!). There are a few "ticking time-bombs" on antepartum though. It was a nice breather from last summer, when we were running 7-10 babies over our "max," straight until February.

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We've been full + for a couple of weeks. We actually had a lull early last month.

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Specializes in Cardiac Nursing.

I don't know everything about my unit yet, but from what I understand we've been extremely busy lately. Nurses have had to work extra while waiting for us newbies to get through orientation, which for my group won't be until at leat the end of November. We have a 10 bed level 3, but have had more than 10 level 3's. The CCN's are chock full too, and none of the level 3's are ready to move to the next level down. So our total census has been between 45 and 50 since I started, and have needed 18 nurses to cover I think.

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