My hospitals has a 4-bed ICU.
We are constanly admitting up to 9-10 ICU patinets at a time, and using completely underequipped mulitbed tele rooms as an ICU "Overflow".
Nurses are put in those rooms alone with no remote monitoring or in-room support. This forces the RN to stay in the room the entire shift and leave the patients unattended if we need to get supplies or call doctors, use the bathroom, get water, etc.
My question: Is this illegal? and can I refuse to take patients without fear of employment reprimand? I don't think that putting a piece of paper on the door that says "ICU" makes it an ICU. Often we take ER monitors just to get cardiac monitoring for these patients, because the tele rooms dont even have wall monitors. These rooms don't even have wall-suction set-ups...
I started in ER and often float to ER on extra shifts. The hospital management refuses to transfer patients and will even tell us up front that there is to be NO transferring from the ER.... ADMIT EVERYONE!!
I don't feel right about this and patients are receiving substandard care while putting our RN licences at risk... what can I do?