Nurse to patient ratio

LadyFree28, BSN, LPN, RN · Mar 25, 2016

We don't allow patients to be in the same room, regardless of relation, with minors being the exception. Does your facility?

I work in a PediER, so we consistently get the "bring a friend/family" day at least once-twice a week.

Harley's mom · Mar 28, 2016

After many years of working in different sized ERs I finally left due to feeling staffing was unsafe. I have worked a cake job with 1:3 and have had as many as 14 SICK people myself with no tech or transporter. My last job was 1:5 which was tolerable most of the time but there was no regard to acuity. I was night shift charge and although the ER was not huge, management had no regard for staffing, especially at night. If we worked the majority of the shift with 2 nurses to cover triage and the entire ER it was not unusual. Techs went home by 1am so you were on your own. The majority of nurses on nights were inexperienced and some fresh out of school. After being reprimanded by my manager for my staff not getting lunches, (almost always because they felt too obligated to their patients and wouldn't go even when told) my manager's attitude was that if a patient needed to wait 30 minutes for pain meds so be it. WHAT? If that was my family with a kidney stone I wouldn't be too happy. I am done with emergency nursing for good. I worked too hard for my license to lose due to having a tragedy happen on my watch because of understaffing.

MedicFireRN · Mar 28, 2016

We are 1:4 in my ED. Granted, if you get a critical pt then the Charge helps out and usually during busy hours we have a float RN. Some days with really short staffing we go up to 1:5. They used to do 1:5 all the time. I'm glad that isn't the norm anymore

waterpeace13 · Apr 3, 2016

I work in a level 1 trauma center. We start with 5:1 but that increases to 7 or 8:1 when the trauma nurse gets pulled and we have to cover her rooms. We see over 300 adults a day. Its a super crazy place, huge nurse turn over, we routinely have no techs no help, seriously thinking about looking for a new job.

emtb2rn, BSN, RN, EMT-B · Apr 3, 2016

For non fast track we staff for 1:4 and the norm is 1:5 but that can go to 1:6/7. Acuity isn't always considered and if you get a esi 1 or a heavy critical, your pts get offloaded to other nurses regardless of their loads. It can really suck sometimes.