Working short staffed

[Missha]

Hello, I'm a new nurse working at an LTC and I just have a question for other nurses regarding what my DOC said to me.

At my LTC, we have 4 units, each unit is staffed with one nurse with 3 PSWs to approx 30 or so residents. Basically 10 residents to one PSW for personal care.

It's winter and the holidays so we get sick calls often. Today, one of the units was short a PSW and because it was decided that their unit was "heavier" management decided to pull one of the PSWs from my unit to work on the other one. So now because my unit was short staffed, we weren't able to get everyone out of bed and into the dining room in time for 0830 breakfast. The ones who stayed in bed had their breakfast trays brought to their rooms and we had a PSW who was on modified duties from downstairs come up to help us feed. Breakfast and the morning meds all took longer to complete today compared to usual, but everyone got their food and medication.

By lunch time, we were able to get the ones who were still in bed up and out (if they wanted to be up).

My director of care comes to me in the afternoon, and tells me that next time we're short staffed, I as the nurse should just leave my med cart and focus on getting people out of bed for breakfast and only do meds after people are ALL out to the dining room.

My question is: Is it right for her to say this?

A lot of my residents are on levedopa which needs to be on time, insulin, inhalers, pain meds and I have to measure BP and pulse for around half the residents before some their meds can even be given, etc. A couple of residents have responsive behaviours and the only time they'll take their meds is if I catch them at the table before their entree is placed in front of them. The morning med pass is brutal on my unit. If I don't touch my med cart or bother even checking vitals and just focus on pc getting people to dining room and feeding, I'd be doing my morning med pass close to noon and dealing with the side effects of some residents who didn't receive meds on time.

My unit was only short because they took a PSW from my unit to work on another one. The PSW shift also starts an hour before the nurse.