Healthcare Informatics Resources

To the nurse writing about Acuity levels, I feel your frustration. This is a big reason I left clinical nursing to obtain a career in Healthcare Informatics. I do not worry about our nurse to patient ratio, acuity levels, or about working extra and not getting paid. In Healthcare Informatics, I handle policies, statistics, computer programs, and machines. I miss the clinical nursing. However with clinical nursing I was missing time with my family, with my health, and with my sanity. Now I feel better about myself and the work I am doing to help patients in a different way.

Original Post
March 23, 2011
Acuity levels
Using higher acuity as a talking point for our need for lower nurse:patient ratios has had no effect. I am totally frustrated, as are the nurses on my unit, on how to get the point across to administration. We are unable to provide the total amount of care our patients need.

We use HPPD, hours per patient day, to set up our allocation tables. And even though my Telemetry unit is at 8.35 HPPD and another unit may be at 7.5; we all end up with a 1:5 nurse patient ratio.

Looking for a way to assign acuity levels to the patients doesn’t seem to hold much impact. As I researched this, I found articles that found inconsistent results with changing ratios to acuity, with inconsistent results in outcomes.

So where do I go from here? Patients are barely getting the attention they need……..the patients are sicker, older, heavier, more are diabetic…..nurses can only find time to complete the tasks and not much more…nurses are so frustrated, they are looking for jobs elsewhere?

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Tags: Healthcare Informatics Employment, Healthcare Informatics Patient Acuity Levels, Healthcare Informatics Resources, Healthcare Online Education Consultant, Online Instructor-Led Healthcare Informatics Courses

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