Rae

My facility is working towards Magnet Hospital status. I know that one of the magnet application criteria is that the facility must demonstrate that there is autonomy. Administration is looking at having different departments wear different colored uniforms. Does anyone who works at a facility with magnet status have administration mandating what the staff wears?

I am seeking help from anyone who has experience working in a closed unit. Our ICU staff is very dissatisfied floating to the Telemetry floor that is always losing staff. I am specifically looking for the good points and the bad points of having this kind of unit. The staff realizes that without our own full core staff, that this may not be an option. Any help would be appreciated.

I have been with the same organization for over 20 years. I make $27/hr and am maxed out. There is no incentive for retained good employees to stay. I look at the new grads starting at $15-$16/hr and wonder how as a profession are we so undervalued. My son who is a HS graduate makes more installing windshields than my new grad RN's do. We can only change things through legislative lobbying. At my facility (being 70-80% Medicare patients)because of the government cutbacks in reinbursement, we have much less money coming in. Also, with competing HMO contracts, they too are able to pay less to the hospital for care delivered. All of these things can only be changed by nurses becoming a strong voice to the lawmakers. If Christian men groups can meet with numbers in the 100,000 or more for a belief, so can nurses. Have we ever met in mass to address our concerns? The time is ripe for nurses now to show our force. I know nurses historically don't want to "rock the boat" for fear of being fired. How can facilities fire anyone when they can't find enough staff. And why aren't individual nursing associations making more noise? It's sad to say I will be moving into a new profession soon. I am studying to become a paralegal. Maybe from that standpoint I can show that nurses are overworked and underpaid.

In my facility and our sister hospital, it is written into policy that any pt on a balloon pump is a 1:1. Why would a facility put itself in a position for possible litigation due to endangering the pt's life instead of paying the salary dollars needed to give adequate care? I would think that in a court of law if you stated that your standard of care in the past was to provide 1:1 care to these pts, the hospital would then have to justify the change in practice.