Last night, I benefited from the Emergency Department being closed. The ICU was short on nurses, so while we actually had empty beds, there was no one available to take care of any more patients. Meanwhile, all of the regular floor beds were full, so the Emergency Department was closed all night to ambulances. (Despite being overcrowded with horrible wait times, ED's are required to stay open to walk-in patients, but transfers and ambulance patients get rerouted to any open departments in the area. The exception to this is that if a patient demands to go a specific facility the ambulance crew has to follow their wishes, and if all of the local departments are closed, then we take alternate taking ambulance traffic.)
For me, this meant only 2 admissions overnight (we had to steal a float nurse from another floor), as compared to the sleepless night of 7 admissions last week.
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1 comment:
And ER closed? I didn't think they ever 'closed' along the lines of Krystals or Waffle House. Then again....the mere fact that Krystals and Waffle House are open at 3am predicate the need for the ER to be open at that time as well;) :) ;)
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