braveheart

Would like to hear from other RNs about floating in their hospitals. Is there a lot of floating to other short staffed areas like ER and Telemetry by ICU RNs? Is this a problem or are there any good solutions out there regarding situations where rapidly changing patient census is a problem for adequate staffing? Where I work in a ICU in a 120 bed hospital in a rural area, there is so much floating of ICU RNs that it has become a morale issue where RNs dread to come to work for fear of being floated again. We recognize that administration has to deal with changing pt census and short staffing especially as these two areas, ER and Telemetry, seem to burn their RNS quickly but I am looking for other ways to deal with it than burning out our ICU RNS due to floating. Anybody know of any help for this situation? We have an RN nursing pool but as soon as they know they may have to float to ER or Telemetry, they quit. We have an unusually busy ER with many indigent patients.