In: Nursing
You are the house supervisor in an acute care hospital. Most of the units are full. The ED request 2 admissions to the step-down unit. The floor with appropriate and empty beds has only 4 RNs on duty for this 30-bed unit with a census of 20 patients. The charge nurse (one of the 4 nurses present) tells you that they can’t safely admit any more patients. You currently have no more float pool staff and upper administration has already said no to closing the unit for admissions at this time. What should be done? What is the ethical dilemma? How does this impact patient care? What possible solutions are there for this situation? Using the scenario prepare a 5 minute healthcare skit through which the roles of RN, LVN/LPN, AND UAP can be played out. Clear differentiation of roles and legal scope of practice should be apparent in the skit. The skit should include examples of appropriate delegation.
1. In the 30 unit of bed 20 patients are admitted still 10 beds are available, so there is no harm of giving admission to 2 more patients but as the nurse said this is not safe to admit any more patient so in this case more alertness is required and this is the duty of our staff to take care of them.
2. Here being a part of medical staff it is our duty that we have to serve every patient with full efforts and trying to take care of them as much as we can. So being in this profession nursing or any other, should be loyal with the profession and have to treat patient no matters what the condition is.
3. It depends, it completely depends on the responsibility and treatment has been given by staff to the patient. If the proper care and treatment was given then no matters it eventually pays in terms of good sign in patient’s health otherwise vice versa.
4. 1. Patient should be admitted in other ward.
2. Because of limited bed and large number of patients we can adjust 2 patients on a same bed but this choice only available for acute diseases.
3. more alertness and proper care will help in this situation