Hi guys. I haven't been here in a really long time due to my intense ER training and overtime.
Something happened in my ER and it is bothering me a lot. For the past 6 months our hospital made some changes by eleminating bidding and weekend track. Most of the staff in our ER (where we were already short) quit. New grads were not allowed to enter ER and we found ourselves in a horrible situation. Local staffing agencies only had a few good nurses availble for us.
To make the long story short every day pretty much I am dealing with unsafe amounts of patients and nothing is changing.
The other day I came in to work and there was an incident where a DNR cancer patient in her 50s A+O came in to the room in am for chest pain. Shift changed at 3 pm and a new nurse coming on found the pt off monitor and dead. last nursing chart entry was from 9 am.
I have not been able to find out exactly what happened, but I am seriously worried about the safety fo my career. I have mentioned this to my management, but there is no real gameplan of what they are going to do for immediate issues. I am still being slammed with patients, sometimes I have to tell CN twice than I can not handle the paitiens I already have when ambulances keep coming in.
I do not want to leave because I love my job, but I am wondering if anyone has encountered similar situations and what has been done about the staffing problem.
The management now is brining track back and we are allowed to bring in new grads, unfortunately we are royally s---d at this point already.
I must agree with all who comment on the nursing shortage, understaffing and possible unsafe practice that can occur. The most prevalent comment i see and hear is " Im not going to lose my license because of this". I totally agree, BUT remember you can only be held accountable for what you do, period. if you feel that you cant handle that extra patient, dont take them.( i understand easier said then done) trust me ive been their. but i see alot of comments that say get out while you can. the problem is everywhere in every specialty. not just E.R and if you run it just makes the problem worse. and who suffers from that. (patients). this may sound synical but im a nurse because i love it, i love what i do and it makes be who i am. just like many of you, it not just what you do its who you are. ive worked E.R for 12years starting as a tech and worked my way up and the challenges ive faced have made me the nurse i am today and i dont mind sounding arrogant when i say im a good one. yes the staffing sucks and the pay is not the best and somedays i just feel totally beat down. But that life i helped save and that thank you i recieved and that hug that little girl gave me cause i made her feel better beats any paycheck i could have recieved. Im not an advocate of perpetuating negativity, and im sure all of you out there arn't either, but as it stands now, we as a whole are not making the nursing profession look like something that the next generation would want to go into. ergo the problem gets worse. Although venting is a good outlet we have to remember what brought us to this field of work. as for your license. your smart and educated, do what you do best, make the decisions to keep you and your patients safe and youll be fine.
Ok....Hon..We all got into this profession to help people...for almost all of us this is true. BUT....we can not let suits walk all over us just because we are Nurses and we are suppose to take it! I do not agree. You talk about the next generation of Nurses....are we to tell them that oh, just deal....that is how it is....NO! If you want change you have to stand up and fight! Don't let them beat you down, this is your chance to stand up for yourself. Our carrer paths are not going to change by themselves.
Yeah... I work at a county level 1 trauma ER and when WE go on divert.. so do all the other hospitals... divert doesn't mean anything in my city unless your a private hospital that has the ability to dump patients that cant pay onto the county hospital.... private hospitals get such a thing as divert... We will be on trauma/ICU/tele/med surg divert and we will get ambulance after ambulance after ambulance of critical pts because all the other hospitals go on divert as soon as they hear our hospital is on divert... We will be putting ICU patients in front of the nurses station on portable monitors because we are so overrun with ICU admits that thats all we can do...
Our staffing is ridiculous... You can easily split a team of 30-40 pts with two RNs... thats a typical night... So I totally understand... I've been to management several times about the issue.... It finally took 5 RNs to threaten filing safe harbor if we did not get more staff for the unit managers to actually put that RN license to use ONE NIGHT...
You can only handle what you can handle.. You have the right to NOT accept care of a patient at any time and file safe harbor... I'd also looked into getting malpractice insurance as well... just to protect myself.. I feel your pain... trust me =)
Its cool that you say that, refering to the suits. My appology if i came across that it was ok to be walked on. What i was saying (in a nice way) was that nothing will change if we just talk trash and run away from the problems and change jobs just because it sucks. i agree with you that we must stand up for ourselves. Me personaly i want to know what (the suits) are doing or plan to do about the situation before i wage war on the issue. remember were the nurses we know what needs to be done from a nursing stand point. they don't. nut in the midst of all that sucks i do believe alot of us need to be reminded why were here.
That brings us to unity Trama....don't you think??? Another thing we as Nurses need is togetherness. Get together with all your fellow co-workers and talk. Maybe together you can find a solution. And there is that saftey in numbers thing...lol;)
You can always call the state department of health. They will come in and investigate. If situations are THAT bad they will shut the ER down. No matter what though, I would leave just to protect my license. If you like the hospital system, try transferring to ICU or CCU until the ER's staffing changes. Or you can go per diem and work somewhere else fulltime. The other option is to leave all together.
If you do choose to stay, I would write up an incident report for unsafe staffing each shift you work that it's unsafe and if you can manage to get your coworkers to either do the same or co-sign yours, it should help a little bit. Incident reports go to risk management dept which should get the attention of the higher ups (if flooded by these reports). They can't ingnore you.
I'm sure your manager is aware but you can try talking to him/her and see where is gets you. Either way, the others are right, you only get ONE license and NO job is worth loosing it over.
BriBriRN
46 Posts