Mag patients on pp floor--help :(

[babyswaddler]

At my previous employer mag patients stayed in L&d until they were off mag because the nurse to patient ratio was lower and the labor nurse had more time to monitor the patient.

On my unit now I may get 6 -7 pp moms, including fresh c-sections, and also a mag patient.

How do you closely monitor your mag patients when you have all these other patients to care for? Is this the norm? I feel like I am totally ignoring my other patients.. and feel like a crappy nurse I really miss my old job, didn't realize how good I had it..

We don't have a cna or tech on the floor and the other nurses are overwhelmed as well.

Can anyone offer some advice?

[babyktchr, BSN, RN]

Do you have 6-7 couplets or just moms.

[serenity1]

I worked pp and we had 4 couplets and many times 1 of them was on Mag. Not ideal, to say the least. Not close to AWHONN guidelines.

[knursern]

Where I work, it is a policy that Mag can only be administered in Labor & Delivery or ICU. It is scary to me to think of a Mag patient being on a PostPartum floor. However, in L&D they don't always have ideal patient ratios so the care might be comparable. But, to me, a Mag patient is a L&D patient, not PP.

[kimberkid]

We have mandatory ratios here in California, where we get no more than 4 postpartum couplets. Our policy is to have a 3:1 ratio if one of them is on Mag. I don't know how you'd manage with that many patients.... it very much does not sound safe to me.

[obprof]

Sounds very unsafe to me! I've only cared for mag pts in L&D.

[KJM10]

Our ratios are 4:1 for pp, 1:1 for mag usually. Occasionally if short staffed we will have another pp pt with a mag but no more than that. We keep all mag pts are on our LDRP floor.

[seanymph]

Like stated previously we have ratios here and do 4:1 and if have a Mag mom then it is 3:1 and your other 2 are usually over 24hrs and may be NICU Moms. It is not save any other way for you or the patient and is not even close to AWOHNN guidelines, which you should make a copy of take to your manager. I can't even imagine going back to work in a Sate (which I did up until 4yrs ago) that didn't have legal staffing ratios. It should me mandated in all 50 states for both patient and nurse safety.

[ckarshick]

I work on an LDRP unit and we keep pt's on mag 1:1 until it's d/c'd...mag toxicity can happen quickly and these pt's need more than the typical pp.

[serenity1]

As soon as the latest AWHONN guidelines came out, we received an email from management basically saying "don't even think about it". Apparently, our budget does not allow for those guidelines.