Moving ICU to med/surg unit

[Forest2]

I was wondering if anyone has come across this one yet. I recently interviewed for an ICU nurse position and during the interview process was told that the ICU was moving to med/surg to be combined into one unit due to financial reasons.

I was told that the ICU nurses would also be required to provide care to med/surg patients on this unit in addition to their own critical care patients.

I first wondered if this was safe. This is a critical access hospital and they lost one of their ICU nurses to ER. I was not told why she left ICU.

In addition, all nurses at this hospital are required to take call in addition to working full time.

What do you think of this? Is this a trend or something?

[purplegal]

Never heard of this before, but it doesn't sound like a good unit. More than likely, the two or so ICU patients you are assigned will need all of your attention because of how critically unstable they are. I would not think you would have time to care for other patients, even if they are "just" general med-surg patients. I probably wouldn't take the job for that reason alone.

[Lennonninja, MSN, APRN, NP]

I wouldn't do it. ICU patients deserve ICU level care, not having your time divided between them and more med/surg patients as well. This sounds like a nightmare waiting to happen.

[Forest2]

I thought the moving of ICU patient rooms permanently to med/surg sounded like a bad nursing model. As far as I have read so far is that critical access hospitals have a lower quality of care compared to regular acute care hospitals already. I wondered why have an ICU at all, if someone happens to need surgery at night, just do recovery in ER. Then move to med/surg or transfer to another hospital.

Maybe this idea did not set very well with the ICU nurse and that is why she went to ER.