Awake on the Night Shift

So even though I’m on maternity leave, I still hear about what’s going on at work. I think that most hospitals are going through some tough times lately….many people are postponing surgeries, births may be down. Belts are tightening everywhere. My hospital laid off people earlier this year, and cut hours as much as they could. This has been tough, as I think their staffing is scary on a good day. Well, last week I heard the latest is that they are staffing one OB nurse in house on the weekends. And to top it off, if there are no patients on OB, that nurse has to take patients on the medical floor. I realize that I am not the one looking at the money aspect, but how in the world is this even thought of as a safe idea? Yes, most of the time things are fine. But…….women do come in and precip, women do come in abrupting……and the OB nurse could be on the medical floor knee deep in poo. Ugh. Not to mention the lovely surveys that get sent out to the patients. They inevitably come back with stuff like, ” it took my nurse 5 minutes to answer my call light”. and “I didn’t see my nurse for hours….”. Then you get reprimanded because of that. I absolutely LOVE OB nursing. But I think my time (at least at this hospital) is coming to an end. And that makes me very sad.