What is considered a "busy" L&D unit?

eandgsma · Feb 18, 2008

Well, I'd call our unit busy...we had over 8000 births in 2006. November 2007 numbers were close to 700 births.

I don't have anything to compare it to though.

-N

Nurse2bNicole, BSN, RN · Feb 18, 2008

My unit is busy. We do about 400 births a month. I cannot even imagine what a unit that does 700 deliveries a month would be like though! That's not busy...that's insane!

madwife2002, BSN, RN · Feb 18, 2008

We had over 6000 a year and it was busy

Elvish, BSN, DNP, RN, NP · Feb 18, 2008

We average 500-600/month. Adds to up 6000+ a year. I think we stay pretty busy. Of course you have the usual feast/famine syndrome, but it's overall reasonably steady.

tntrn, ASN, RN · Feb 18, 2008

Busy is any unit when you have too much work and not enough staff to properly care for your patients and for yourselves. Our unit does 90-100 a month, but TONS of outpatient stuff, OB triage (flu, runny nose, but always pregnant) and the gyn surgeries. We run our tails off.

rpbear · Feb 21, 2008

I have worked on 2 L&D units, one did 600+ deliveries a month, the other does 100-150 deliveries a month. I feel 10X busier on the unit with less deliveries. We have less staff, we do overflow, we have AP's, we have PP's, we have way less rooms, so we are always doing the Pt. shuffle. "busy" is not about how many deliveries you do a month.

fsaav · Feb 21, 2008

Thank you for all of your replies. Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that the nurses themselves are less "busy" depending on how many births. The hospital where I will be working after graduation has approximately 3500 births per year and I just didn't know what that number meant in terms of what other hospitals do. It sounded like a lot to me, but after seeing what some of your hospitals are like I see that that's nothing!

tntrn, ASN, RN · Feb 21, 2008

I have worked on 2 L&D units, one did 600+ deliveries a month, the other does 100-150 deliveries a month. I feel 10X busier on the unit with less deliveries. We have less staff, we do overflow, we have AP's, we have PP's, we have way less rooms, so we are always doing the Pt. shuffle. "busy" is not about how many deliveries you do a month.

And on the "quiet" days we get rewarded with floating, sometimes 2 or 3 at a time, to the medsurg unit, which is so poorly managed it's hard to describe. The fact that they even think that L & D nurses (some of us who haven't done MS in 30 years) are qualified to care for their patients is laughable and big topic where I work right now. If only the patients and families knew. Of course, I personally think they should be told...maybe there's a way to get fired, after all!

**canoehead, BSN, RN** · Feb 21, 2008

I used to work a fairly sleepy OB unit, but without back up, so the nights I had 3 deliveries, plus caring ante and post partum, it took a fair amount of skill. I've also worked in a city ER where they had tons of ancillary staff, and was bored and frustrated because I wasn't able to do what needed to be done, and the patient waited. Keep your own temperament in mind when you look at the different job offers.

rpbear · Feb 23, 2008

And on the "quiet" days we get rewarded with floating, sometimes 2 or 3 at a time, to the medsurg unit, which is so poorly managed it's hard to describe. The fact that they even think that L & D nurses (some of us who haven't done MS in 30 years) are qualified to care for their patients is laughable and big topic where I work right now. If only the patients and families knew. Of course, I personally think they should be told...maybe there's a way to get fired, after all!

We get asked to float also, and everytime we ask them "Would you want to be floated to L&D?" The answer is always NO! wo we ask "then why do you think we would be comfortable floating to your floor?" They have stopped asking us to float! We will go and be "helping hands" which means we don't take a pt assignment we just help, that leaves us available to come back to L&D if needed.

tntrn, ASN, RN · Feb 23, 2008

We get asked to float also, and everytime we ask them "Would you want to be floated to L&D?" The answer is always NO! wo we ask "then why do you think we would be comfortable floating to your floor?" They have stopped asking us to float! We will go and be "helping hands" which means we don't take a pt assignment we just help, that leaves us available to come back to L&D if needed.

We aren't "asked to float". We are told "you are floating today". And sometimes MS nurses do float to our floor, but they are NEVER EVER given labor patients to care for. They get the gyn surgeries (so still in their expertise area) or Post C/S moms. They never have to do the babies.

Unfortunately, it's in our contract and try as we might, we can't negotiate it away. It's going to come to some horrible thing happening on MED-SURG with one of our nurses to change things. And even then, they'll hang our nurse.

Oh, and sometimes they will float one of ours, but if our unit gets busy, we can't have her back. So then they try to get someone to come in on OT to cover. That game, to me, is called "S***W your buddy!" and on principle, I won't come in on OT to make up for that kind of staffing.

Oh, did I mention, our morale is lowest of the low?