Busy Busy Busy

It's kinda scary that the work I'm currently doing, we used to do with a third less staff!!

Yesterday, I was talking to a newly qualified nurse who was upset that we were likely to be taking extra patients onto the ward (we've 26 beds and we were going to have to fit 2 more in!) She felt it was unfair to do so when they weren't prepared to send any extra staff to assist. This seemed reasonable on her part but when we first opened this ward, we had extra patients most of the time and worked with fewer staff every shift. I shouldn't have been annoyed with her for expecting the support but I was because she really didn't appreciate what it had been like to work there previously.

Currently, we're running with an average of three trained and three untrained nurses during the day looking after 26 patients. That's a reasonable ratio in my eyes and gives you just about enough staff to get the work done and take breaks somewhere in-between. It's by no means the great level we had on the Specialist Unit I did work on (two trained & two untrained to 6 patients!) but for a busy acute ward, it compares favourably. The nature of patinets in neurology is such that this can be quite demanding but when you consider we did the same amount of work with the same staffing level as the aforementioned specialist unit when we opened two years ago it kinda generates some perspective on today.

I'm not saying nursing is easy. yesterday, I worked my arse off and missed my evening break to ensure the workload was completed before the next shift but that means I still got a morning and lunch break... Something I never used to be guaranteed! Jxx