What's your average census?

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Just curious what kinda of census your unit has and how many deliveries a year you have and if your unit does transport. My unit is in another slump. We have 4,000 deliveries a year, but we do not do transport. We are a level III with oscillator capibilities and we keep babies of all gestations. We transport out for ECMO, surgery, extensive diagnostic testing, nitric, and head cooling. Sometimes are census will drop below 10. It just boggles my mind that we can have 4,000 deliveries a year and have a census below 10. Doesn't make sense to me. We have a diverse population and handle high risk pregnancies. We have our share of drop in/no PNC patients as well. I realize that our census is going to be down because we don't do surgery, do transport, etc... but a census under 10? Doesn't make sense. We have 25 beds and there have been many occasions where we have been full but that hasn't happened in quite awhile. I am not expecting a steady census of 20 or more, but more than 10 seems reasonable. It's frustrating because we have such a busy delivery service that is growing year by year so I would expect out census to stay up. So what gives? How about your unit?

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Specializes in NICU Level III.

We usually have 70-80 something. We are in the 60s right now and people are getting canceled and floated like crazy. :( We're a 90 bed IIIc unit.

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Specializes in Neonatal ICU (Cardiothoracic).

I'm not sure how many deliveries we do a year...but our average census runs between 68-74. We are licensed for 58 beds. The lowest I've seen here is 48 for one day, and the highest was 83 babies for three days...

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Specializes in L/D 4 yrs & Level 3 NICU 22 yrs.

Our unit has 60 beds, and we do transports, nitric, HFOV and surgeries. We will be starting head cooling later this spring. We don't do ECMO. Out census has been low since summer with an average of 45. We have been called off and floated out a lot too. Several PRN nurses have had to quit and find jobs elsewhere. This hasn't happened in years! I got pulled last weekend, and before that it was in 2001!!! Hopefully soon all the "snowstorm" preemies will be coming!

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We are running between 90-95% capacity. We are a large level II/III. We usually have overtime shifts available.

We had a week in December where our census dropped to about 75%.

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