Reply #10: You got it... [View All]

[rainbow4321]

The facility that I work at doesn't understand the word "acuity" when it comes to staffing, a patient is a patient whether they are up walking in the hall or they are total care, near death's door needing massive amount of bedside nursing care...except when it was time for JACHO to come around and then staffing is made the way it SHOULD be. Our floor didn't admit patients the week JACHO came, staffing was wonderful, safe, etc..
Literally, the night *after* JACHO came, we got 9 admissions. They had been blocking admissions and keeping patients on other floors because the LAST time JACHO did their inspection, our floor threw up red flags w/ patient falls, poor documentation about other stuff..so the hospital arranged it to cut the number of patients in half.
We had 18 patients when we normally run in the 30's. No patients there means no charts for JACHO to scour over, no charts means less chance to find stuff wrong...MORE importantly, the nurses had SAFE nurse/patient ratio and things ran the way they are supposed to---**safely**.

Another example:
When our hospital census runs low, it is the nurses that get screwed..full time nurses get canceled in a heart beat. Some have gone weeks without getting a full paycheck due to getting cancelled. Does administration suffer when the census is low?? Hell no, they come to work and get paid the full check. Not the nurses, though. It's not like the nurses can only pay half their bills one month and say to their utlities/creditors "sorry, I got short paychecks every week".

My floor has had 80% turnover in the last year..management says it's because the nurses come to my floor "to get their year of experience" and then they go elsewhere. Bullshit. That may be true for nurses who go and work at the best damn hospital in town that will give them tons and tons of exposure to awesome cases/scenarios (like our local trauma center--Parkland Hospital)---but at OUR facility, we burn them out in less then a year, they are clawing at the door to leave within months of getting hired, when reality kicks in. Some have left during orientation.

SORRY to rant, this whole thing is a sore subject to me (as a nurse for 15 years, I've seen the same greedy hospital tactics year after year).