“I would make a law that lowered the nurse-patient ratio, because we have too many patients to give the quality care we would like to give,” says Stacie Tarin, a new nurse who recently won our iPhone giveaway.
Yes, people actually do win on RealityRN! We always make good on our promises.
Like most new nurses, Stacie, who worked a year and a half at a children’s hospital on a cardiac surgery unit and now works as an adult cardiac nurse, knows the stress of being stretched thin.
Stacie states, “In school we focused on holistic care and formulating care plans. Most hospitals in my area use pre-printed care plans, and there is not enough time to do all the holistic care we learned about. It’s sad.”
In the back of her head, she knew to expect this; during nursing school, Stacie worked as a patient care technician and learned early that the real world didn’t always match classroom theory. Still, she is committed to nursing because she loves working with patients and their families. “I really want to make a difference,” states Stacie.
To get through the rough days, Stacie has visited RealityRN, who has been comforted to know she is not alone in having some “not-so-great experiences.” Stacie states, “It makes me feel like I'm not crazy after all!”
Join the RealityRN community in congratulating Stacie!
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June 28th, 2008 at 4:37 am
This is a debate that has plagued nursing since the beginning of time. We have all been spread thin at some point in our nursing career, one nurse and the never ending needs of patient just to keep them alive, no time to think of the needs to keep them comfortable. To summarize this debate, by lowering the nurse-patient ratio, we have to close beds on the unit because the amount of nurses are not enough forcing sick patients to be held in the ER or surgeries to be canceled because of lack of beds. This extends ER wait times and patient out of hospital death because of lack of surgery. The other thing that can be done is to hire more nurses but in doing so, you lose supplemental staff such as techs, housekeeping, and RTs; after all there is a limited budget. Both of these scenarios are situations faced by many California hospitals. In theory you could lower nursing pay but in order to do so you have to be either in an amazing city and offer great benefits, or be a hospital that people want to work for you (there’s only four I can think of where this is true). However, a nurse pay cut would discourage many people from becoming nurses and further influence nurse-patient ratio. Just my two cents.