We recently discovered a memo in the house supervisor's office from administration that clearly instructs the house sup.'s to work the floor short (no agency) if an employee calls in sick. I work med-surg. I guess they think the nurse's peer pressure will prevent unnecessary call-in's. This doesn't seem right or safe to me. I was thinking of the legalities of this and what would happen if there were a sentinel event (not to mention increased back injuries, nursing burn-out, patient satisfaction, med errors, etc...)?
We went threw this at my job for a time. Management seems to be taking a different path at the moment.
There were nights when we would have 4 nurses for 12 - 16 L&D patients. Sometimes it was really scary. We got memo's saying that everyone had to expect to take 2 patients (even the charge). 2 patients each is fine unless something bad happens or if more patients come in and then it's 3 patients each. If everyone has 2 patients and someone needs a crash c/s that means someone is going to have 3 patients.
They would staff bare bones and then in the event of a call off they would offer double time. After a few months of this no one would come in for double time because if they were offering it you could assume it was really bad and after months of running our butts off the money wasn’t worth it.
At an open forum I asked the CNO "is it really cost effective to have staffing so low, when you have to pay people double time to cover shifts?” She said it was and what I realized was that they were counting on people turning down the double time. Then they could say they tried to cover the shift and get away with having 4 nurses on a shift that should require 8.
I totally believe the statement made by that management test (I have seen it with my own eyes). Nurses will kill themselves to make sure the same amount of work is done even when short staffed. The observation someone made about it being cheaper to pay an occasional lawsuit is also correct. They have lawyers on staff and settlements are already factored into the budget, as are malpractice insurance premiums. So unless the law suites get way out of hand they really don’t cost them any more then they already planed on spending.
Most nurses didn’t enter their profession to "make money" so sometimes it can be hard to understand management’s actions. What we have to do is learn to speak their language and show them that taking good care of patients is the way to put money in their pockets.
One big problem is that management tends to be short sighted and will think in terms of quarterly profits rather then long term. They can and will at times sacrifice their reputation in order to meet a short-term budget.
In our case I think they realized that nurses were leaving and that the cost of hiring/training replacements was much higher then adequately staffing (it costs them about $20,000 to train a new nurse). Still I know that it will come around again and that we will see a time when we are 4 nurses doing to work of 8.
Dayray, RN
700 Posts
We went threw this at my job for a time. Management seems to be taking a different path at the moment.
There were nights when we would have 4 nurses for 12 - 16 L&D patients. Sometimes it was really scary. We got memo's saying that everyone had to expect to take 2 patients (even the charge). 2 patients each is fine unless something bad happens or if more patients come in and then it's 3 patients each. If everyone has 2 patients and someone needs a crash c/s that means someone is going to have 3 patients.
They would staff bare bones and then in the event of a call off they would offer double time. After a few months of this no one would come in for double time because if they were offering it you could assume it was really bad and after months of running our butts off the money wasn’t worth it.
At an open forum I asked the CNO "is it really cost effective to have staffing so low, when you have to pay people double time to cover shifts?” She said it was and what I realized was that they were counting on people turning down the double time. Then they could say they tried to cover the shift and get away with having 4 nurses on a shift that should require 8.
I totally believe the statement made by that management test (I have seen it with my own eyes). Nurses will kill themselves to make sure the same amount of work is done even when short staffed. The observation someone made about it being cheaper to pay an occasional lawsuit is also correct. They have lawyers on staff and settlements are already factored into the budget, as are malpractice insurance premiums. So unless the law suites get way out of hand they really don’t cost them any more then they already planed on spending.
Most nurses didn’t enter their profession to "make money" so sometimes it can be hard to understand management’s actions. What we have to do is learn to speak their language and show them that taking good care of patients is the way to put money in their pockets.
One big problem is that management tends to be short sighted and will think in terms of quarterly profits rather then long term. They can and will at times sacrifice their reputation in order to meet a short-term budget.
In our case I think they realized that nurses were leaving and that the cost of hiring/training replacements was much higher then adequately staffing (it costs them about $20,000 to train a new nurse). Still I know that it will come around again and that we will see a time when we are 4 nurses doing to work of 8.