TKHnurse

Any evidence base floating kills patients? Any recommendations on articles to counter this CNO’s directive and no floating policy?

The consultant CNO brought in mid this pandemic, and she has made it clear her focus for our hospital is addressing COVID. She has created an environment where 3-4 units are understaffed on any given day, and the other units are overstaffed since supervisors cannot float to balance the hospital. COVID cases are extremely low in this hospital, and it makes no sense not to float nurses, especially with nurses very good with their PPE and infection control practices.

No mid-shift floating is occurring, before this directive, nurses were floated from clean to clean units then go home. CNO abolished the float pool and assigned agency nurses to specific units to “stop the floating.” This is impractical dealing with staff call outs and staff testing positive for COVID.

Very true, we all float to our families every day our nursing supervisors float clean to clean, and “dirty to dirty” theses (dirty units) are units in the hospital placed under quarantine any given day for 14 days after a staff member tests positive for COVID-19. However, the CNO still has a problem and wants NO FLOATING. Our COVID unit has dedicated nurses and CNAs that she has directed to only work on this unit. The census on this unit has gone down to one patient, and she kept three nurses.

Hi all, We have a Consultant Chief Nursing Officer at our hospital since July 2020 who made the statement in front of seasoned nurse leaders that “Floating Kills Patients.” She is against the nursing supervisors floating nurses across the hospital units during COVID-19. This is a long-term care hospital with eight patient care units. One dedicated COVID isolation unit with a census of two patients with an average of three nurses all three shifts. If the supervisors don’t float nurses, it leaves the units unbalanced where one unit has eight nurses and another unit only with three nurses but with higher acuity. Can anyone share insight on this topic, any evidence out there floating kills patients during this pandemic?