sending nurses home early

TRAMA1RN · Dec 2, 2007

This is becoming common place in every department. Money talks!

widi96 · Dec 2, 2007

We have two options - send them home early or send them home early on call. But yeah, we do it quite frequently - usually if they have less than two hours or so on their shift, they get to go home flat out. If it is more than that, it is an on call situation.

RN1980 · Dec 2, 2007

we are already at minimal staff levels in the er and icu and have been nothing but busy as hell for the the past 6mo. which is good and bad, you get alot of extra ot and shifts, but at times if someone calls in you might have to work short which sux to, but not as bad as having to go home. a hospital i work part-time for did this type of thing about a yr ago and started sending folks home and within 2hrs later they were busting at the seams with patients and they were having to call folks back in, eventually alot of staff left the place for other hospitals.

rjflyn, ASN, RN · Dec 2, 2007

Fine you can send me home, but my contract calls for paying me time and a half when you call me back which ends up costing you more. It's your call.

Or I show up for for a shift, you have to pay me for 4 hrs, if I work 1 or 4, so you might as well keep me for 4.

I understand hospitals are a business, but quality nursing care saves money. Shoddy care does not. One big seven, eight or god forbid nine figure lawsuit judgement against a facility and having a extra nurse standing around is going to look kind of cheap.

Rj

littleRNthatcould · Dec 3, 2007

This is a major pet peeve of mine. As the OP pointed out, this is the ER, where things of an unexpected nature ARE expected. I would think that the PTB would be more than happy to pay my meager salary to stand in the department waiting for the proverbial "code brown" to hit the fan versus the loss of capital (and potential loss of medicare and medicaid funding) when patients die and lawsuits are brought from the lack of available nursing care.

Just my $0.02

alkaleidi · Dec 6, 2007

We occasionally send people home -- rarely on day shift, more commonly on midnights (7pm-7am) -- minimum staffing I believe is 5 nurses + 1 lead + 2 (or maybe 1) ED Tech... the other night we had 7 nurses and I got sent home at 12:45am. Another one went home at 4:00am. It just depends on the night. I've never been there when someone's been sent home and had a crisis due to "working short." We make sure all of the main rooms, trauma rooms, IV cart, EKG units, etc are stocked and all of the supplies are available (all rooms have suction set-up and ready, all rooms have all of the room monitor attachments like pulse ox, cardiac monitor leads, BP cuffs of all sizes, etc) in each room, and do general cleaning up -- if all that stuff is done and there's maybe 3-5 patients or less consistently for a couple hours, they send people home. I understand both sides -- safety and saving money. I don't necessarily agree with dropping the staffing down to the bare minimum because you never know what's going to walk in, roll in, or be dropped off in the ambulance bay, but at the same time it IS kind of nice getting to go home early once in awhile.

BriBriRN · Dec 7, 2007

Thankfully we never do...It always seems that at 1300 the ED gets crazy busy....That would suck if we were a Nurse down! :uhoh3:

NativeSundance, LPN · Dec 7, 2007

We NEVER send anyone home early! The ER is usually busy all night, but on the rare occasion we have any open rooms, we just savor the moment. I'm thinking it would be dangerous to send home staff from the ER. How can you possibly know what will happen 5 minutes from now? Risky business there! As someone pointed out earlier...one lawsuit will correct that problem!

LoveMyBugs, BSN, CNA, RN · Dec 8, 2007

Just this week we ended up going on divert for 4 hours, because 3 RNs were sent home, then we filled up and went on divert because they were unable to bring the staff back in so we had 9 rooms that we were unable to use.

allnurses Guide · Dec 12, 2007

I work nights, and on rare occasion we get down to one or two apiece. But those Monday morning cardiacs have a way of coming in at 0630 whether its Monday or not. Plus the MVAs of hungover folks trying to get to work on time (lots of commuters here). No way do I want to be short staffed at the end of the shift.

webbiedebbie · Dec 12, 2007

This also happens in L&D. I worked one hospital where I suggested instead of sending a nurse home, to have the nurse stay "on-call" but could sleep in any empty bed anywhere in hospital and to have a beeper with them. This worked out very well. We adjusted the "on-call" pay rate but I can't remember what amount was decided upon.