Some commenters have observed that it is hard to see how this is related to staffing issues (ratios in particular).
I’m inclined to agree: this particular instance is not clearly an understaffing issue, but it certainly could have contributed.
I think it is definitely emblematic of the disaster that our MBA run, payer driven healthcare system has become.

To me it suggests a real failure in both policy and training. This type of TPN error should have triggered some immediate actions. either the RN was not aware of a policy/procedure, or an appropriate one did not exist.

Unfortunately, I watched as so-called “quality measures” became increasingly remote from patient care, and focused on cost proving. Hospital “educational” offerings were largely either BS cheerleading sessions to make staff “feel more empowered” (barf!) or training to use some order entry system. Any real professional continuing ed. was increasingly on your own time (using vacation time or days off).

I also endured years of token pay increases, benefit and staffing cuts, and learning of executive bonuses.

Many experienced nurses get fed up, and areas are left with a high number of less experienced staff.

Now, the emphasis to replace nursing staff seems to be promoting nursing in school and funding accelerated RN programs.

Great. Perfect. Feed a bunch of new grads in to a system lacking experienced nurses to train them, with the same shit in place that ran many nurses out to begin with.

For myself, I could see that my years of commitment were going to leave me with a bad back, a lousy retirement, jeopardizing my license, and a nice warm feeling of having helped a lot of people.

I don’t see private enterprise deciding to start treating nurses fairly on its own.

I’d better go ahead & submit this before the thread gets too much older!
Again, thanks!

No matter, though, if extreme negligence, poor communications, or bad staffing, or some combination were causal; all three have their roots in poor management.

rwcole @
51

For those who were looking for more recent JARs for Clusterfuck- here’s one- from Fox- just released:

38%
[snip]

who are these people, these 38%? who?

Somewhere at or below the 38th percentile, I should think.

For those who were looking for more recent JARs for Clusterfuck- here’s one- from Fox- just released:

38%

.

Approve
Disapprove
Unsure

%
%
%
.

12/5-6/06
38 54 9
11/4-5/06 LV
38 54 8

who are these people, these 38%? who?

universalhealth @ 3:30 pm (#63)

While the story is heartbreaking, there are many leaps of logic and implied causality which are not supported by the evidence provided in the story.

While I agree that the evidence shown doesn’t prove that understaffing was the cause of this death, one has to consider it as one of the possibilities. Overwork and understaffing can lead to such bad decisions, which I think was the real point here. There was a six-hour delay between the time the pharmacist issued that a high-priority correction concerning medication and the time someone finally acted on it for a patient in intensive care. That’s either extreme negligence, poor communications, or bad staffing. I don’t think there are any other reasonable conclusions.

BTW, most commenters here know this, but I’m not a medical professional. Some things are just plainly obvious.

Titanyum, HinTN and all, sign the SEIU petition for these nurses. They would be so grateful for your suppport.

SUPPORT THE SEIU NURSES

DONE!!! And gladly so. Thanks for this post.