Our nurse-patient ratio changed for the worse... Help!

[nurse carla espinosa]

I work in a large high acuity level 3 NICU (hfov, ecmo, etc) where management recently changed our staffing ratio to 1:3 (from 1:2) in our acute area and 1:4 (previously 1:3) in our less acute area. Mind you this does not include our intermediate NICU which is separately staffed.

The staff feels this is really unsafe and we re filing out staff discrepancy reports with our union and incident reports. Is there anything else we can do? Anyone successfully managed to get staffing ratios changed in your hospital?

[xoemmylouox, ASN, RN]

That's insane. I wish you the best of luck.

[BacktoBasics]

Are your ECMO and HFOV 1:1's?

[brandy1017, ASN, RN]

I don't understand how they are able to do that when you have a union. Usually the union is involved in staffing ratios and grids and would put that in the contract. If they haven't they need to do that ASAP. The union should be able to pressure the hospital thru picketing, petitions, and approaching the doctors to side with the nurses on the issue! The admitting doctors should have some say in the staffing ratios since they bring in the patients! They may back down if picketing is threatened because that would bring unwanted attention to the hospital and they would want to avoid such negative publicity.

[nurse carla espinosa]

i believe and hope they are keeping the ECMOs 1:1. our hfov were never 1:1 (unless in a really extreme circumstance) and with the new changes i had 2 babies one which was extremely labile on HFOV and was first admit!