Ok, I work on a SNF (inside of a hospital) but we get mostly med-surg patients when the hospital is full. Ok, so when the census gets to 16 or below we only have 2 nurses and 2 cna's on nights. On this floor NO ONE is allowed to get up alone at all, so we are almost always out of the nursing station. Patients have to call for anything. More than half of these patients are always confused. Well, what do you do with a patient that you can't leave alone? Especially when management doesn't listen. He's constantly trying to get up (every 10 seconds), so he's at the nursing station sitting beside me. I spend my entire night trying to keep him from groping me, stopping him from pulling out his 6th IV and PICC line in 3 days, keeping him off the floor, keeping his gown and underwear on (he likes to go 100% naked), stopping him from picking and scratching his skin causing skin tears. We are a restraint-free facility. Family refuses to stay. Family refuses to hire a sitter. Our floor refuses to spend the money on one.
Our 4 supervisors just laugh it off, but won't even help, even though they are "required" to work the floor if needed. Maybe I just needed to vent but this has been a horrible weekend. I haven't been able to get anything done. We had 12 falls last month, and none of them could have been prevented because each time we had a fall on my shift we were all in other patient's rooms responding to bed/chair alarms. Even though we asked for more help, they just told us to deal with it. Just ridiculous. Any other suggestions on how to handle this? Sorry for the ramble.
I document all the things the pt does b/c we have to chart every 2 hours (such as safety measures taken to divert behavior) Managment has my written statements, copies are locked in my locker. The reason why I did it was because I did not have time to re-start another IV on him before I left and the oncoming nurse was ******! I told her I didn't have time and explained why and asked her could she do it after I give report because I STILL had meds to pass, and his next antibiotic dose was now due. This was my first time ever asking the oncoming shift to do something and she went ballistic. I don't argue with idiots.
We have "patient safety rooms" on a few of the floors at my facility. 4 beds to each room and one CNA in that room at all times tending to patient needs. It seems to work well.
That souds awesome! But we can don't even have enough cna's to even work. We're supposed to have 2 but lately we've had 0. Can't wait until my year is over so I can transfer.
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Dazglue, ADN, BSN, MSN, RN
380 Posts
I document all the things the pt does b/c we have to chart every 2 hours (such as safety measures taken to divert behavior) Managment has my written statements, copies are locked in my locker. The reason why I did it was because I did not have time to re-start another IV on him before I left and the oncoming nurse was ******! I told her I didn't have time and explained why and asked her could she do it after I give report because I STILL had meds to pass, and his next antibiotic dose was now due. This was my first time ever asking the oncoming shift to do something and she went ballistic. I don't argue with idiots.