Nurse Staffing

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Specializes in Telemetry.

I am just curious what other hospital staffing looks like on days vs evenings vs night ratios. Do you have max on patient assignments where your unit becomes closed to admissions and transfers. I am trying together information together to go to the higher ups in my hospital...because lately we have lost a lot of really good nurses and it is just worsening the nurse patient ration and NURSE RETENTION is AWFUL!

just to give you a little example of what happens where i work:

i work on a fairly busy telemetry unit and our hospital is all about numbers accuity is never an issue. I have been on this unit for 5 years love bedside nursing but lately i am really thinking about leaving i am at my wits end. last night for instance i had 7 patients on a telemetry unit, how can i efficiently take care and monitor these patients when they are stable never mind when problems arise which occured, I had a patient going through active etoh withdrawl on frequent iv ativan doses as well as a patient who went into rapid afib rates 170 sustained and transferring someone out for an elective cardiac cath. I was pulling my hair out by morning. never mind hourly rounds, documeting and 24 hour chart reviews as well as fixing the many errors found while reveiwing charts and orders not signed off correctly

how can they even think of retention of nursing. no wonder there is such a shortage when we get treated this way

Heated! :banghead:

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Specializes in MDS RNAC, LTC, Psych, LTAC.
I am just curious what other hospital staffing looks like on days vs evenings vs night ratios. Do you have max on patient assignments where your unit becomes closed to admissions and transfers. I am trying together information together to go to the higher ups in my hospital...because lately we have lost a lot of really good nurses and it is just worsening the nurse patient ration and NURSE RETENTION is AWFUL!

just to give you a little example of what happens where i work:

i work on a fairly busy telemetry unit and our hospital is all about numbers accuity is never an issue. I have been on this unit for 5 years love bedside nursing but lately i am really thinking about leaving i am at my wits end. last night for instance i had 7 patients on a telemetry unit, how can i efficiently take care and monitor these patients when they are stable never mind when problems arise which occured, I had a patient going through active etoh withdrawl on frequent iv ativan doses as well as a patient who went into rapid afib rates 170 sustained and transferring someone out for an elective cardiac cath. I was pulling my hair out by morning. never mind hourly rounds, documeting and 24 hour chart reviews as well as fixing the many errors found while reveiwing charts and orders not signed off correctly

how can they even think of retention of nursing. no wonder there is such a shortage when we get treated this way

Heated! :banghead:

Jen,

I have been an RN and have worked in different areas and in 3 different states and the facilities I have worked at be they hospital systems, state, federal or private they all staff by numbers not acuity and as I have always worked nights or evenings, the staffing is less even though patients discharge alot of times in the evening and patients at night don't just sleep and on a cardiac floor admits just don't stop at all during the night. I wish I could tell you something different and who all this staffing crap hurts is the patients but hospitals and management it is a business matter for them for us its our worry we can't take care of our patients adequately.:twocents::o

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Specializes in Telemetry.

thank you for your input. i am just trying to get the higher ups to change things. it probably wont happen but at least my big mouth has to try...because the patients are the ones who ultimately suffer

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Specializes in ICU.

i work a step down cardiac unit where the ratio is 5 to 1. the accuity of the patient has gone up over the 5 years i've been there. no time for anything except pill pushing. 4 patients would be good.......almost do-able. somehow that 5th patient puts you over the edge and you loose the art of nursing and switch over to pill pushing. every nurse in the world would tell you accuity is the key to staffing but the accountants run hospitals and they just don't get it. :cry:

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