VENT - Caring for patients in 3 bed rooms

[abbaking]

I find it very hard to care for my patients in multi-bed rooms . My hospital is very old and outdated. The patient rooms consist of 2 bed, 3 bed, and 4 bed rooms.

The 3 bed room is by far the most difficult room to care for a patient. Doing a simple transfer from the PACU gurney into the bed can be a pain in the neck. Imagine this for a minute: You need to transfer a Post-op patient from the gurney into the third bed. The rooms are small in general. The first and second beds need to be turned sideways to allow the gurney to pass through. All of the crap in the room needs to be moved in the hallway for a few minutes (chairs, linen hamper, etc.) Then, because of the configuration of the walls, you need to slant the third bed at an angle and then you BARELY have enough room to do the actual transfer.

Then you need to remove the gurney, turn the first and second beds back to there regular positions and bring back all the chairs and so forth back into the room.

Just Venting here - Its a pain in the butt! This is bad enough for a basic medical unit but in the ICU - its torture with 3 beds in there!!!

[Ivanna_Nurse, BSN, RN]

Oh Lord.... I dont know how you do it, because I would be bald from pulling my hair out, and probably fired for running my mouth. :) Sorry its such a pain for you. Maybe they will remodel soon! Ivanna

[drgnflydggr]

That's awful! So glad I don't work there, or have to receive care there. My hospital is (slowly) moving to all private rooms - as it should be. How does one abide by HIPAA while discussing medical care in a room with other patients. I hated having a roommate in college - I can't imagine the horror of sharing a room while I'm ill.

[shiccy]

My mom in approx 2005 had surgery at Cleveland Clinic. I never really thought twice about shared rooms for a minute until she told me the horror stories including but not limited to the roommate keeping the TV on all night long on FULL volume. My mom would ask the staff to turn the TV off b/c it was inhibiting sleep. They told her that, turned off the TV, and 20 minutes later she would turn it back on. She also had 100 visitors in the room and/or was talking on the phone 24/7. Needless to say she was so happy to get the heck out of there. I can't believe hospitals have survived this long with double rooms.

[sunnycalifRN]

I feel your pain!! I worked in an old hospital, too and the ICU was 2 or 4 beds/room!!

[RNperdiem, RN]

I miss the old days when gurneys were much narrower and lighter, and beds were a bit smaller. It would have made the 3-4 bed wards easier to manage.

[Fiona59]

I worked in a four bed room unit a while back. We all loved it. All your patients in one room. Nobody got tv.

Time warp? Maybe. But they could see you were actually doing something and stayed off the damned call bells.

And the best bit was nobody fought being discharged and asked for an extra day.

We actually missed that when we returned to a two bed and private unit.

[CaLLaCoDe, BSN, RN]

What I don't miss about multiple rooms is the gossiping that goes on between patients, either they're against you as a group or for you. I prefer the latter. The first hospital I worked at as an RN had a four bed occupancy room. Later it became a storage room.

Some of my fellow coworkers felt the room was spooked, when they would to get something out of that room they'd get the heeby geebies:eek:. I think they possibly were right, since so many people died in that room with the other patients possibly suffering the trauma of witnessing a code blue.

[Zookeeper3]

Logistically that IS a nightmare. I always wish for the old days when the ICU was an open bay unit and we could see all the patients all the time, a simple curtain to give "privacy". It was vey bad with codes. Isolation rooms.... HA, it was masking tape on the floor around the bed, lol!

[mree]

I guess it all depends what you're used to! I'm in the UK, and although I'm now an ED staff nurse, I did a lot of Auxilliary and Student Nurse shifts on wards during my training. Standard wards in the UK are usually four 6-bed bays with maybe 4 'side wards', or private rooms. Having every patient in their own room would be my idea of a nightmare! Even now, when admitting patients from the ED to a ward, I regularly get asked by the patient (especially if elderly) to make sure they're not put in a room on their own, they tend not to like being isolated. So, we only put patients in a side ward if they're infective or at the end of their life.

[BluegrassRN]

And the best bit was nobody fought being discharged and asked for an extra day.

This alone makes me wish I worked on a unit with multi-bed rooms.

[abbaking]

I don't mind caring for patients in the 2 bed or the 4 bed room - at least with the 4 bed room, the beds are the opposite walls - so in actually its just a large open room with 4 beds - two on either side.

But the 3 bed room is very hard to provide care. As I mentioned, due to the unusual configuration of the walls, the third bed needs to be slanted for any transfer into a gurney.

Sometimes it can be a workout to move the beds and equipment in the first and second beds so the gurney can pass.

In general, I feel sorry for the person in the second bed. Bed 1 could be vomiting, and Bed 3 could be having a massive code brown and the poor helpless patient in bed 2 is stuck there in the middle.

FORGET IT WHEN WE HAVE A CODE BLUE!

If the first bed codes, those two other patient have no choice but to listen to it. If bed 2 codes, that is a very tight squeeze and if bed 3 codes - at least the first two patients have the option of being able to leave the room.

All in a days work!