When a nurse floats to your unit........

[night owl]

do you give them the easier assignment?

We generally do this so they don't have to struggle so much even if one of our nurses has that assignment. But some of us have been pulled to other units where they'll give you the hardest. We want to keep them happy so that when they have to come back again, they won't have to moan and groan. It gets frustrating when someone is floated to your unit and they come with an attitude. "I'm not doing this and I'm not doing that. I'm only here to pass meds." Huh?

[Gompers, BSN, RN]

We usually try to be very nice to nurses floating up from Peds and OB. We try to give them decent assignments they would be comfortable with so they don't hate floating by us and help us when necessary - some units are notorious for "secretly" sending nurses home or giving them vacation time, then telling other units that they don't have any nurses to send them. :angryfire

Like if we have an OB nurse coming up, we'll give her feeder/grower babies who don't have any IVs or oxygen or anything, so it's just really like the newborn nursery, which they'd used to. If we have a Peds or PICU nurse, we'll give them our bigger, chronic babies, because they are used to that. If we've had a PICU nurse by us more than once and she seemed comfortable, we'll give her vented patients as well, but usually a bigger baby, not a preemie.

When WE get floated, sometimes it's not so equal. Sometimes they try to give us moms when we go to OB, but we usually get to just stay in the nursery. Sometimes in Peds and PICU they change their assignments around and give us all the babies (some of them we know from our unit!) but other times they refuse to "bother" with that and we end up getting teenagers and stuff!

[BittyBabyGrower, MSN, RN]

Gompers...I swear we are just a source of entertainment to the regular peds kids LOL Last time I went to comp care I had all big kids and I was like...man, they talk to me LOL I always wonder what the parents think when they ask questions and I say Oh, I am up from the NICU, but let me find out...they are probably like...WHAT!

Every now and again we will go to PICU and they will only have traumas...that makes for a miserable night for all involved...those ET tubes look like vacuum hoses to me!