Need advice urgently on pt safety!

[sunnygirl1981]

Hi everyone! Hopefully someone here can tell me how to proceed with this... I'll try to make this as short as possible but I work in a labor unit that does over 7000 deliveries a year and they decided we were outgrowing our 12 ldrs 3 high risk rooms(we also have a seperate special care antepartem floor, our rooms are just for unstable high risk pts) 4 bed recovery room that we also use for labor pt's sometimes and 3 ors. So now we have a new unit we 6 more beds, a 2 person recovery room and a or plus are old unit which we keep open for our high risk labor pts but they didn't increase staffing despite us having to staff an extra charge nurse on the new unit and the additional rooms. We also have very high risk pt's due to being a level 3 hospital with very sick moms and babies. Staffing is now a huge issue and pt safety is being compromised and we've voiced our concerns to management and their only solution is to offer incentives to staff to be on call if needed but no one is doing it bc we are all burnt out. We never get a break in our 12 hour shift and you are constantly being pulled back and forth between the two units and switching pt assignments so there isn't continuity of care at all. IN c sections we are supposed to be circulating but bc nicu doesn't take our babies we have to care for them and circulate which is almost impossible when many c section babies need a little extra care transitioning. They keep telling us to hang in there but they aren't doing anything about the problem and to make matters worse they through in new computer charting and infant security system all within the same month. How can you take care of an antepartem abruption 27 weeker on cont. monitoring, an insulin drip and mag, and 32 weeker who is antepartem on mag and 7 cm and 33 week twins you ar holding off who is also on mag? This was an assigment last night and when the nurse complained about the safety of it the charge nurse said "the day shift nurse didn't complain about this and what am I supposed to do, there aren't enough nurses". I used to love my job but now I come home crying bc Im afraid for my pts. Does anyone have any advice on what our next step in getting our voices heard should be?

Thanks!

[Susan9608]

If you've appealed to your manager, with no response, and your manager's manager, with no response, then your hospital should have a risk management specialist ... go to that individual. Then go to your hospital's legal counsel and make them aware of the situation. Then go to the hospital's CEO. If worst comes to worst, go to the newspapers.

Also, you don't *have* to take an assignment that you feel is unsafe. Do you have Safe Harbour where you are? What does your state nurse practice act say about unsafe assignments? Contact your board of nursing, and ask them what to do about unsafe assignments.

Remember, if you take an assignment that you know is unsafe and something bad happens, it's your behind in the hot seat. Protect your patients and protect yourself - don't take assignments that are unsafe.