Please be aware that when you come into your local ER, it may be short staffed. You may have to wait hours in the waiting room because a part of the ER is closed that would normally be open. There may be less nurses covering the areas that ARE open. That means that the areas that are open, the nurses may have 1-2 more patients than they normally do. Therefore, expect to wait for the interventions ordered for you. The fact is if you are not critical, because of short staffing, you may be ignored for some time. We may count on your family member to inform us if something has changed with you.
Don't even ask me about the short staffing that is going on upstairs on the inpatient side. Suffice it to say, things are probably worse up there. Plan on waiting some hours for an inpatient bed.
What's behind all of this? The economic downturn affected the hospitals too. Census went down. Now it seems to have headed back up. No nurses have been hired in about 3 years. So we are already way behind on having the number of nurses we need. Hospitals are now scrambling to increase their staff. In the meantime those of us still there struggle to take care of you.
Sincerely,
your overworked nursing staff
Wow, thanks for your honesty. It is extremely sad that the economic down turn is affecting hospitals, too. I have actually heard and read about stories where people died in the emergency room because they didn't get help in time.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I have gone to the ER twice and I didn't have to wait more than 2 hours but even then I could tell that the entire staff was extremely busy. It's such a shame that nurses & doctors are so overworked in hospitals. Some doctors don't even consider working in hospitals anymore for exactly that reason. Thanks for sharing, gave me a break from working on how to study for the mcat.
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Your right, the staffing is just not there. Our patients are sicker than ever and the pt to nurse ratio has gone up. I work as a floor nurse and it has gotten really bad. We are rushed to take care of more patients and things fall between the cracks. We are not able to provide the care we want to and the care the patients deserve because of a decreased budgets.
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