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I have debated for awhile about writing anything about this. After days of wanting to scream at the top of my lungs and demand the government to help us, I finally gave up because I realize it would take too much for the state governments to want to protect nurses. I mean, what's their gain?
Obviously they wouldn't want to place into affect laws that would guarantee a safe nurse to patient ratio; that would be absurd. Of course they wouldn't want to put into affect laws that would mandate the maximum amount of hours that we could legally work; that's even more ludicrous. These types of laws would only help protect the patients and help prevent a severely exhausted nurse from having more patients than he/she can handle... obviously nothing bad can come out of that equation, right?
I hope by now, you can sense the sarcasm and anger I am emitting.
Some of my coworkers and myself are severely upset lately. So much so that one called a lawyer for legal help. This state has no laws in place to protect nurses. Legally, they can have 1 nurse with up to 60 patients, per the lawyer. Is this making you feel safe going to the hospital?
The company we work for has no morals about them. Each unit at my facility has usually only one nurse. They'll put one nurse over multiple units. They'll have one nurse with ~30 patients. Feeling safe yet?
This company even has tried to pull nurses to a unit that they have no prior experience with, and they would be the only nurse on that unit.
How is it safe or legal to pull a nurse to a unit to be the only nurse and they have had zero orientation to that unit?
I must be over thinking this because since the government has no laws in place this must mean these practices are totally safe and leave the patients completely safe, right?
Published by Nurse D
7 years ago 
