crystalrn

I currently work on a closed unit in a local hospital. We have been open units in the past, and personally I was very dissatisfied with the open unit policy. What happened to us was that our small twenty bed unit was usually staffed well, but the larger med/surg units were running short unually everyday. So someone "got pulled" to go to another unit, almost everyday. We started rotating who would go, but it is still frustrating. The unit I work on is rehabilitation, so we would sometimes run our unit short so that our staff could go to acute care. I think that each unit should be responsible for staffing their unit adequately. It is not unreasonable to be short staffed occasionally, but if it happens on a consistent basis, then maybe the staffing situation needs to be readdressed. The pro's would be that most staff would be crosstrained to work in various areas of the facility, and would be able to provide quality patient care on whatever unit they we pulled too.