July 27

I had to go to the new hospital today for all of my pre-employment stuff screenings and fittings. It was strangely exciting to be back, although I have two more full weeks off before orientation and I plan to soak up every moment of that time.

The new hospital is big and shiny and overwhelming. It makes me feel like how I did as a travel nurse back in the day. I'd plaster a smile on my face and ask anyone who didn't look lost how to get where I needed to go, then walk confidently towards the wrong elevators (noooooo I FOR SURE did not do that today, definitely not) until someone else takes pity on me and redirects. 

I also finally went through my work bag to get rid of all the usual detritus that accumulates over the years at a place. Things like old flushes, suture packs, and badge pulls. I found a mason jar that does not belong to me, my spare shears that had been lost (or so I thought), and after sorting through the trash I now have a mostly empty bag ready to fill with more bits. 

I had also done a locker and mailbox sweep on last day but was too salty about how things ended to actually go through it all until now. But get this - I found some paperwork that truly underlined how unsafe the hospital had gotten, and reinforced my decision to leave as the right one. One of my coworkers, on a day that I wasn't there, had filed for Safe Harbor during her shift and gave me a copy of it. Between 3 nurses, there were 51 patients in the lobby. One nurse was the triage RN, one was the arrival nurse, and one was responsible for the care of every single patient out there. Fifty one patients, many of them inpatient holds. 

Everyone knows hospitals across the country struggle with staffing, but when will hospitals learn that it takes nurses and medics and RTs and PCTs and CNAs to actually do the work that the metrics are measured against. You want your patients happy and fall-free and to avoid CLABSIs and everything else bad? You want higher reimbursement and insurance payouts? Hire more staff and pay them. If you don't, well, the hospital will still run. But bad outcomes will happen, your senior nurses will leave, and everyone will watch what was a fantastic hospital take a sad spiral into being a bad one.