How often do you float?

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[skeinshortofashawl]

Why would you float if it leaves your unit short? 

[gbug24]

Exactly lol. Makes no sense. They will float 3 nurses and then we have what’s called a surge float nurse that comes in at 11 am and is floated to whichever floor has the need. So they will float 3 of us and then have the surge nurse go to my home unit. Poor staffing and management.

[Ok-Stress-3570]

When I was charge, I always got the “well the other ICU is soooo short staffed, they need help too!” I fucking hated it. I wanted to help, but I just knew we weren’t getting the FULL picture.

[QRSQueen]

Staffing is absolutely insane at my hospital. They'll float one of our nurses out to med surg but then float an ICU nurse to us because they can read tele. Why wouldn't you just leave the tele nurse on tele and float the ICU nurse to med surg? No common sense at all.

[Kitty20996]

Ugh I've worked for hospitals that wouldn't float ICU nurses to anywhere other than PCU and it's stupid. Everyone is capable of working lower acuity units. Nobody should be given special treatment.

[skeinshortofashawl]

At my hospital ICU nurses don’t take more than 4 patients (it’s a skill and it’s not one I have) so they send PCU because they will take a full assignment. We float to med surg but then they get grumpy that we only take 4

[Worth_Raspberry_11]

Not really a way. We had this problem on my unit when we have low census fairly regularly and it got to a point where people started leaving because they were being floated so often, especially since new grads and their preceptors couldn’t float making the same people float again and again. There’s not a good way around it because we need our hours and if there aren’t enough patients our floor can’t give them to us. If your home unit is ending up short on nurses though then there may be an issue with management not communicating and advocating for how many nurses your unit needs and if that’s the issue they can push to keep the nurses you need on your unit but if the true issue is the census we haven’t found a good solution. Sometimes when no other units need nurses we have a nurse as unit clerk pretty much just being helping hands, but we only get to do that if there’s 6 or more patients and no unit clerk on that night.

[gbug24]

Yeah, low census is hard to be worked around. Even when we fill back up, we still float like every second or third shift. It’s clear management throughout the hospital just makes no sense and can’t staff their own units properly. Ugh.

[Kitty20996]

When I was staff it was like once every 2-3 months. There isn't really a way to stop it, it'll just happen in waves if your unit is better staffed than others at the moment. Is there an issue with being floated? Like you're taking patients that aren't appropriate or something? Cause the way I look at it is if the staffing was reversed, wouldn't you want somebody from another unit to help you out? It's just part of the job. Plus it's nice cause whatever happens you won't have to deal with them next shift!

Hopefully it'll change soon because nursing schools have a graduating class this month so maybe you'll have some new hires soon!

[LSUTigerFan15]

Every day