Usually this time of year alot of people are on vacation and our in patient census drops to low levels. This years and now over the 4th of July has been no exception. The one thing that surprises me is that even though our census is low our staffing is still the same and we continue to work short handed. My hospital is so short of full time nurses that we have used agency nurses for over 2 years to fill in, but now they are told to stay home and even our full time RNs and pct's are being called off on daily basis . The other day in ICU there were 2 RNs on duty (we had 2 patients)
but 2 minutes after I returned from CT scan with my patient we received a
fresh OR patient and 2 minutes after that we recieved a patient from the floor coding and connected to external pacer. There was no extra help because everyone was called off....a hospital created shortage. I believe that this pattern is more the rule than the exception and exactly how nurses are being exploited by hospitals. Is this how it is where you work?
Just like the others - I got put on-call tonight because of low-census. It's either feast or famine - too many patients or too few. Shortage of nurses? In some areas perhaps, but I haven't seen it at our hospital. Usually just poor staffing management.
sprout
17 Posts
Just like the others - I got put on-call tonight because of low-census. It's either feast or famine - too many patients or too few. Shortage of nurses? In some areas perhaps, but I haven't seen it at our hospital. Usually just poor staffing management.