What is considered a large hospital??

[SiempreBella]

How many beds? over 900? also what is considered a small hospital? What's average? :loveya:

[NeoNurseTX, RN]

ours is >900...pretty large! i think about 100 of them are on my unit.

[matchsticktgt, LPN]

The largest hospital in my vicinity is a 900+ bed teaching hospital - that is the main campus, and has a few smaller community hospitals....I consider that quite large. They are constantly adding on, building new, etc....so I would be very surprised to see that number stay the same. Most hospitals in my area are in the 560 - 600 bed range. We have 5 main hospitals, with 2 of those having "branch locations".....

[ngates]

Saint Francis in Tulsa 918 bed hospital.

[sailornurse]

My first RN job was at St Joes in Phoenix in the 1979. Ithink back then it was about 800 beds but I do not know if that included the Barrows Neuro Institute. It was so large I would get lost many times!! Part of the problem is that it had been added on to many times, so some elevator did not go to certain floors & it had many crazy hallways, some that were dead-ends.

Anyways, I consider a hospital large if they have to have different colored stripes down the hallways that one must follow to get to a particular location or if it takes you 20 minutes to get from your car to your unit, then that's a large hospital.

At St. Joes it took almost 15 min to get to the cafeteria, you could spend another 10-15 min in line, so there went your 30 min lunch break!!! It was pointless to go get lunch there.

It's good to get experience in both large hospitals and small hospitals as each teaches us different skills.

[DoGoodThenGo]

Hard to find anything definite, but one does not think "large" always meant physical size of the hospital, but much like "general hospital" (not the soap opera), clinical settings that had:

Round the clock doctor and nursing services, labs, oxygen service, operating rooms, etc... In short much of what one considers standard for any modern hospital today.

Such things were not always standard in hosptials in all parts of the US, especially in less populated areas, and or when many persons were treated at home. When you got really ill, required major surgery or treatment your local place in a one horse town offered, you would have to be sent/go to a "large" hospital, usually in the nearest big city.

As for big barns of hospitals, NYC is full of them,and one has worked a more than a few. Even worked "wards", at one, something you never see today.

Sadly many of these old barns of hospitals have floors and floors of units/areas that simply aren't used and closed off. Built in an era when *all* medical treatment had long hospital stays (anyone remember when having a baby meant going in soon as labour began,and being discharged four, five or even seven days after delivery? Sometimes longer), such buildings simply do not suit modern healthcare where much is done via outpatient services or in a doctor's office.

Some of those old hospitals were darn spooky when working nights. Once all the lights were out and things were quiet, the spooks came out! *LOL*

DGTG

[Perpetual Student]

I think of anything bigger than 300 as large. The bigger hospitals around here (including the level I TC and level II TCs) are pretty much all under 500 beds. There seems to be more of a decentralized approach, with a lot of 300-450ish bed hospitals spread out across the entire Puget Sound area. As mentioned above, there is less demand for lengthy inpatient stays than there used to be so hospitals can serve a large population with a fairly small number of licensed beds.

The hospital I'm going to start at soon would be considered small by pretty much everyone's standards at about 100 beds.

[HappyNurse2005, RN]

hte hospital i just left had 825, and it was the big hospital/referral center for htis part of the state.

[Blackheartednurse]

Yep I think any hospital above 300 beds is considered big although it sounds considerably small when compared to 800 bed hospital...I will be working for a trauma 1 375 bed hospital.

[P_RN, ADN, RN]

I worked in the mother ship of a 6 hospital consortium that also managed 5 more hospitals but not under their name. The mother ship was 800 beds, a cancer hospital and a childrens' hospital of maybe 150 each not included in the 800. The smallest managed one was 5 beds. I'd say under 40 was small, up to 300 was medium and over that was large. But maybe that's regional because like NYC there's a hospital on nearly every corner isn't there?

[chimpanzee]

The big hospital in the inner city has 950+ beds and is a teaching hospital.There's also a bunch of smaller community hospitals in suburban areas with about 250- 400 beds in each hospital. There's also a children's hospital in the city that has about 150 beds(had to look that up). So it really varies.

[ChristineN, BSN, RN]

The hospital I work at says on it's website that it is a 609 bed facility, which actually surprised me because it seems fairly small compared to some other hospitals I've worked at.

[Ruby Vee, BSN]

i worked in a 400 bed hospital in a northwestern city. it was considered huge. i worked in a 1000 bed hospital in a northeastern city. it was considered average. depends on where you are, i guess.