Patient safety question

Published

Specializes in Long term care.

I work in a long term care facility. Before COVID we had over 150 patients spread across 3 units. It was a fun place to work. I worked on the rehab unit, and we were busy. We had constant admissions and discharges. Things were fast paced and I enjoyed it. Enter COVID. Our rehab unit stopped admitting. We got hit hard, and many people passed away. Our facility shut down our rehab unit and moved patients to long term care or our special care unit for psych patients. We currently have about 80 patients or so. COVID is pretty much gone at this time from our facility. During COVID we have been functioning with 2 med nurses (each has about 15-25 patients) per unit, and a charge nurse, six LNAs per unit on evenings and 2-3 LNAs on nights. My facility is raking in considerable less profit, and their response to this is to cut staffing. They have talked about going down to 1 med nurse (responsible for around 50 or so patients) and one charge nurse who is doing all the documentation. And then 2 LNAs on evenings and 1 LNA on nights.. My initial thought about this is... this seems unsafe and stressful. Some of our patients require minimal medication. But many: we have some brittle diabetics, patients with intense psych issues, chronic pain. Am I being a baby here ? I am a relatively new nurse (6 months of experience... believe me the irony of becoming a nurse in the middle of a pandemic is not lost on me). Or does this seem wrong?

And by "wrong" let me correct myself to mean unsafe. I worry that meds will not be able to be administered on time and patients will not be able to receive the care and treatment they need.

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