Patient Ratio

[jerry5657]

What is your current patient/staff ratio's? I work in a 13 bed ER with a Fasttrack of 10 beds(Fasttrack staffing is 1 or 2 nurses for usually a little of 30 patients for a 12 hour shift) during the day shift only, consequently that shift has basically the sicker patients in the ER part. Our staffing could be a 1 to 1 say for a code or possible up to 1 to 4. That doesn't sound so bad but often with the accuity of the patient care its really beyond safety to take more than 2 or 3. We are often short of monitors and supplies, have very few tech's usually one that we often have to share with triage. We see more patients in our area than the nearest hospitals - usually around 130/d (including the fast track patients) give or take a dozen. There are few hospital rooms available so often there are holds and we wind up with folks in the halls on carts. I see great nurses being overwhelmed by the workload - the hospital doesn't seem to have the funds for improving the facilty or staffing - any magic beans out there?

[happy&healthy]

... We are often short of monitors and supplies, have very few tech's usually one that we often have to share with triage. We see more patients in our area than the nearest hospitals - usually around 130/d (including the fast track patients) give or take a dozen. There are few hospital rooms available so often there are holds and we wind up with folks in the halls on carts. I see great nurses being overwhelmed by the workload - the hospital doesn't seem to have the funds for improving the facilty or staffing - any magic beans out there?

re "the hospital doesn't seem to have the funds for improving the facility or staffing" - SEEM ?

This worsening "healthcare-crisis" is in part a question of mis-appropriated funds, as in Administrators demanding salaries that hospitals do manage to find $ for : "the Medical Group Management Association reported that, in 2002, median salaries for administrators were $78,258 in practices with fewer than 7 physicians; $92,727 in practices with 7 to 25 physicians; and $125,988 in practices with more than 26 physicians."

A foundational factor concerns the fact that ir-rational Beliefs have become accepted, by the general-public, as 'good medicine', while anything but that including prolific harmful & dangerous practices... continually

drain necessary resources from Emergency-areas where it's critical to have such available 24/7.

And unfortunately the way our society as a whole, including our healthcare systems, continue being structured you can't expect this situation to improve anytime soon.