ccrn12

Our staffing has been outrageous lately, too. The hospital brought in a productivity company a couple years back. They know nothing about healthcare, they are only concerned about numbers and money. So they only schedule so many nurses based on the average daily census. They don't take into account patient acuity, anticipated admits, or even new hires being oriented to the unit. We are supposed to take no more than two patients per nurse, but in our CCU at 11pm we are allowed two nurses for five patients. Tell me how that makes sense? They start us out a nurse short. If we get our sixth patient after 11pm then both nurses on the unit have three patients a piece. We do total care in our units, so no techs. Also, no secretaries after 11pm. So tell me how two nurses are supposed to answer the phones, put in orders, and provide total care for six potentially ventilated and sedated patients. The only saving grace that we have is our staff. Everyone is willing to sign up for extra days and come in extra at the last minute to help out the nurses on the schedule. Without our teamwork it'd be disastrous! I'm sorry there's not much more advice to give. We do just have to "suck it up" and work together to provide safe care to our patient's until someone somewhere decides it's a good idea to give us more nurses!