VRE, etc on the floor?

[RNBelle]

I work on a post partum floor, we also take antepartums and gyn surgeries. Supposedly the state regulates that only non-infectious patients can come on the floor. So when the entire hospital is full we can get any non-infectious female patient. Well now our administrative director says we have to allow any patient on our floor. We had a pt with a hx of VRE last week and then this week a pt with an oozing and infected surgical incision. Is this common on other postpartum floors?

[babyktchr, BSN, RN]

OMG....what an issue. We have a closed unit (locked doors, you have to have a pass key to get in) and we have the same rule. If a non OB or GYN patient is "dumped" on our unit, they cannot have fever, infection, anything oozing, NOTHING...because there are mom/baby couplets in that area also. The administration is very good about not putting things there that aren't supposed to, but they certainly try by understating a condition or not knowing about them at all. Just the other day we had a hyster come to us with active shingles. The shame of it all was that the MD didn't think NOT to tell anyone about it (but ordered meds for it) and that PACU didn't tell the supervisor before they assigned a bed. I had to fight the nursing supervisor about moving her because she said there were no private rooms in the hospital. I merely mentioned that if a baby ends up with "something" I will certainly refer them to administration. Amazingly, a private room was made available 15 mins later. Interestingly enough, later inspection of these oozing wounds found MRSA. Yikes.

I think that is one area that cannot be compromised. There are too many things that could go wrong, and if a baby did acquire something, there would be hell to pay.

[lmc512]

Our postaprtum unit is also free game for any pt. in the hospital. I hate that. The non-postpartum pts geneally take up the majority of your time on a shift and the postpartum pts that are supposed to be there get "ignored" We also gets MRSA, VRE and whatever other gross thing comes in the door. I have had pts on Trauma service, oncology (the nurses that should have had the pt had to come down and do their chemo on the PP unit for us), general medicine of course and any other service really. The other PP units I have worked on did not accept admits from outside the hospital because NICU docs would not let them on the basis that the pts are "dirty" I thought that was the norm. Wow was I wrong. Now that I changed hospitals, like I said it is a free for all. Then again we get plenty of pts that are PP and are MRSA+. Then I love how when our unit is full LDR has to hold the pts rather than sending them to another adult floor but if med surg is full and PP has beds then sure go ahead and send this to PP. It's enraging!

[RNBelle]

i love pp for the teaching i get to do with my pts. but when i have 8 pts and 6 are medical and sometimes in really rough shape my pp's are definitely ignored. oh well....i am moving in a couple of months so i wont be hanging around too long on this floor, thank goodness!