Staffing issues

[greyseal]

Hi,

Sorry about the first post.

I work in a new tele unit. I am charge on nights. I have also have pts myself. We do interventional cath, all gtts, post surgical tele pts, acute MI, CVA, and any other service if we have an open bed, such as colon-rectal, urology, trauma, pulmonary, ortho, neuro, neurosurgery etc that do not need tele. Our floor has 21 beds. We do not pull our own lines. We are staffed with 75% new grads. No one has any tele experience, including myself. We should be staffed 4 nurses on nights, but this does not always happen. Sometimes there are all new grads on days on the weekends.

I am very nervous about missing subtle changes in the tele patients. The major changes are no problem. We have no ongoing education on cardiac meds, treatments etc. We learn as the patients come to the floors. The new grads are very overwhelmed with the complex medical, barely having enough time to learn telemetry. We all had 3 classes on cardiac nursing months and months ago. There is no one to learn from on an ongoing basis on off shifts and weekends.

I also posted on the general discussion board before I realized there was a specialized board.

This does not seem like a safe situation to me, I am thinking of leaving. I have brought this up to my manager to no avail. I appreciate anyones opinion or advice.

[oh-agnurse]

That is a really tough situation. I've been on a tele floor just like yours with 33 beds, and I also work all the shifts. Nights can be really tough with low staffing, and the majority new grads. I myself have been a nurse for only 4 yrs. Sometimes I'm the only one with ACLS, and that is scary. With the tele do they offer a critical care course, and tele course through your hospital that you are required to take? They are very helpful. I found a book on reading ecg's called ECG's for Dummies, something like that , and it was very helpful. With the staffing, do you have a nurse/ pt ratio chart/policy for staffing? Do you have a union that you can go to? If they try to pull staff from us we always question, and make sure they are not pulling to fully staff another floor. Have all the new staff been oriented? My orientation was for 10 wks. Make your situation known and request these classes. The sqeeky wheel gets the grease!!! Good luck!