My neck, my back...
I'm trying to do a little info gathering about changes in ICU ratios these days.
If your hospital has changed your ICU or your ICU+SD ratios, what are they now and what were they before?
Did you get anything in return, like reduced documentation burden or a bonus? A documentation scribe? Telehealth support? C-suite answering phones? (Lolllll)
Feel free to vent but I'm also looking for deets
Posted Sep 3, 2021, 6:37 PM UTC
I’m still 2/3:1 (depends on acuity. 3:1 would be all IMC/med surge)
We’re getting bonuses for OT because everywhere is short but that’s it.
Thanks for the info; take care, wherever you are!
Nothing to add except I thoroughly enjoyed that opening line…hahahaha
We implemented disaster charting to reduce documentation burden
Would you mind sharing what that entails?
It’s a single tool within Epic (navigator) that defines the minimum documentation required for inpatient nurses per shift. It’s all in one location and reduces that charting burden
Oh that's a nice EPIC build. We have like 5 tabs on a good day. Thanks for the info.
HMU if you want to discuss it further
We were allowed to do this on our COVID unit, but not on our regular ICU. The nights I had three or four patients and was in charge, it would have been very convenient.
Tbh, I teach them the customization options during onboarding (ie only necessary tabs, how to locate Kardex, etc.) and then show them functionality.
Our hospital has a standardization issue and I focus the training on documentation being integrative to their workflow…not an ancillary task. In other words, optimize Epic to make it a part of your nursing process, instead of a task that comes after the fact.
We are 2:1 for most ICU patients. Standard 1:1 are fresh hearts until they are extubated or past the first night, paralyzed and proned patients, EVDs, CRRT, balloon pumps, ECMO, open chest, OPO. Team of Med/surg or PCU we are 3:1
It hasn't changed but they did look into a team nursing model last surge that wasn't utilized often, basically an ICU RN could take a higher patient load while non ICU RN did tasks.
I'm concerned they're going to make us 1 RN to 1ICU and 2SD and I think I'd rather have team nursing, honestly.
Yeah
They did this in our MICU at my hospital for a bit and it was disaster. Most of the time, you couldn’t get away from the step down patients to take care of your critical one. In our SICU, we actually hired some SD travelers to handle higher patient loads with lower acuities and they would occasionally send us registry step down nurses. With our new union contract, they can no longer pull step down nurses to ICU’s, but we also can’t get pulled to step down so it balances out somewhat. Our step downs run with anywhere from 5-8 patients, and I would rather die…lol
5-8 SD? I think I just did stroke out