At what census do hospitals have a night shift
Started by baronzb
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No.
Maybe. I know of one hospital that is that size with no night shift (on call only). They do mostly joint replacement day surgeries, outpatient or same day procedures, oncology services, and emergency care/urgent care (anything serious like trauma gets shifted to the other two hospitsls fairly close by). The pharmacy is on call at night and really that is all that is needed for them. Fairly unusual. They used to be bigger but the surrounding population dropped and so the hospital had to drop services in kind.
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How much of a red flag is this situation and in what capacity
Depends on the facility. Is there a busy ED that can admit to an ICU and med/surg on-site? What kind of services does the pharmacy offer (pK, anticoag, etc)? What is the average census? If the answers to these questions are yes w/ typical pharmacy services and the average census is significant; then one third shift pharmacist would be the minimum. Otherwise, the morning crew will likely be walking into a **** storm and playing catch up all day. At face value, I would take this as a red flag. There are number of reasons to not have a pharmacist present on third shift at a facility like this, none of them acceptable IMO.
If it is a hospital which offers services from 9-5 as described above, then I think everything could be done remotely overnight.
I couldn't imagine having to come in on call to mix everything that might come up overnight in a 300 bed hospital. That sounds like a nightmare, and I hope you are well compensated for this.
I'm voting no, this is not normal.
I'm voting no, this is not normal.
300 beds and no night shift? That seems like an outlier - to say the least. We have 3 night shift RPh's with 425 bed - from my experience, 100-150 beds tends to be the change over to staffing night shift. Doing remote order entry is a PITA - and setting up the policies and procedures to change over / have on call, to me, isn't worth it if you can get proper night shift coverage. I would be seriously concerned if I received an offer in this current situation. How many FTE's do they have? How many people staff day shift/evening shift?
My old joint had 150-200 and we had overnights.
Yeah, the average census would be more important. OP, how many of those beds are sitting empty on average? Also, are you counting beds that are just for 24 hr observation/skilled nursing/psychiatric/etc--beds that generally aren't going to have new IV's be ordered overnight?
Otherwise, yes 300 acute/ICU/CCU beds that are usually filled without an overnight sounds crazy.
I don’t know the whole break down but that number is the whole hospital. We don’t have a psych floor.
300 bed hospital, 2 nightshift pharmds and one technician here.
No idea how you'd operate without a nightshift OP.
No idea how you'd operate without a nightshift OP.
Hospitals must have 24/7 pharmacist coverage if they do any kind of invasive cardiology. I know of a couple of critical-access facilities that do this, although they are CAFs that are almost always at or near full census, and there's no cath lab for 100 or more miles in any direction.
