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Staffing for acute dialysis patients

By Caroline Mak posted 03-15-2012 13:18

  
I work in an acute care dialysis setting within a hospital.  We also do a few outpatients.  We are looking into our practice of staffing in the evening hours.  Currently when we have 1 or 2 patients left on dialysis we are having only 1 nurse stay; this is usually well into the evening.  We are looking into requiring a second person, not necessarily a nurse to be in the unit as well.  Can anyone comment on how they staff acute units when the day is finishing. Do you have a policy in place, or is it just a recommendation?  Thanks for any help.
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April Hopperton
08-28-2012 15:45

That is also the policy where I work at. The only way that we have one nurse is if the patient is admitted to the critical care or stepdown unit. Then the nurses from that floor are able to assist with any problems that may arise.

Judy Kubischta
05-11-2012 09:01

Our practice has always been that we never leave one nurse or staff member alone in the unit due to the critical nature and potential for a crisis with these patients * especially inpatients who are usually pretty sick in the first place. In our view, we feel that having only one staff member in the unit would be an unsafe practice, unless you have another unit adjacent to your who could assist in a crisis.