I am a fairly new staff nurse and a member of a unit based council in an Ortho/Neuro/Trauma unit. This council by contract deals with staffing concerns and patient care issues. Our main issue started two years ago in which management changed our nurse to patient ratio to now take routinely 5 patients on the day shift and 7 patients on the night shift. This was introduced as a temporary fix to reach our budget goals. During this two year span, our patient satisfaction has dropped from 94.45% to 77.03%, our patient falls and hospital acquired pressure ulcers have increased significantly and there has been a decrease in staff satisfaction and retention. As of now, we first brought our concerns along with evidenced based research to our unit supervisor and chief nursing officer and were told, “There’s no money in the budget and there must be something else besides staffing causing these changes.” We are in a crisis and have decided that we will not stop until our patients can be guaranteed safe care.
- Karen, MI
Tags: Professional Employees, Professional Integrity, Public Interest
Did they cut back on administration? Of course not! Anyone who has worked for a hospital in recent years can tell you that there are way too many people with business degrees and not enough nurses and other hospital personnel to provide proper patient care. The corporatization of healthcare is the crisis. Too many overpaid executives and other administrators demanding their employees do more for less in a field where mistakes can be costly and even deadly. It is such a pathetic situation.