Mission Santa Barbara, known as "the Queen of the Missions," was founded in 1786. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Continuing my conversation with the nurse who still works at Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara, she complained about the reduced size of the nursing stations in the remodeled wards. I jokingly said that the nurses needed to be smaller. Then I gave the situation more serious thought. Foreign-born nurse are usually smaller than American nurses because of diet. Beyond that, I think that smaller nursing stations indicate management’s future intentions. Patients will be increasingly monitored remotely with one employee, not necessarily a nurse, assigned to watch the monitors. Then it will be possible for each nurse to be assigned more patients, reducing the number of nurses needed. Staffing levels have long been a bone of contention in California with unions involved and propositions proposed for voters to decide.
Please see Usability
Related articles
- How To Break Into Nursing (answers.com)
- Question Of The Week: Turmoil In Management (nursingassistants.net)
- Virtual doctors are a worrying idea – but we’ve already got virtual nurses (blogs.telegraph.co.uk)
