Med/surg overflow onto GYN...

[timonrn]

Has anyone been experiencing this the last year or so--medical pts that you have no idea what to do with because you are suppossed to be an experienced OB/GYN nurse? Administration has said basically, tough, you have female beds--you have to take them, but in the last 6 months alone we have transferred so many pts to MSICU or CCU/Tele. because they were so unstable and we do not have the equipt nor expertise for these pts--we are GYN nurses for gosh sakes. I can handle as much as any med/surg nurse but I am sure tired of looking at stuff and looking at the pt and saying "what have we been doing for this drain/packing" etc? the pt knows more about their care than I do--not that I mind learning new stuff but give me a GYN pt once in awhile!! it's gotten soo bad (one pt coded and died the next day) that this hospital HAD to find space for an overflow med/surg unit--20 beds--to tkat the pressure off of our unit, because the original concept when we opened our little 20 bed unit was a Women's center for recovery of GYN and related Womens issues--somewhere that got lost--all I can say is this new med/surg unit is almost a day late and a dollar short if you ask me--they should have listened to us a year ago--

[lawilk99]

I worked in Mississippi a few years ago and the overflow from the Med-Surg unit to our OB-GYN/PP and Peds unit was constant. We would be caring for Pediatric pts with RSV, 90 year olds with peg tubes, fresh GYN surg, and PP pts all on the same floor! Talk about Nosocomial infection potential!! But don't try to tell that to Nurse Managers or Administrators. They turn a deaf ear.