Nurses Floating Within the Hospital

The hospital that I works for has a float pool that works more like the better/latter version. It looks like fun! I really enjoy the fact that as a float PCT, you do not HAVE to get involved in unit politics. I hear enough through the grapevine that I'd just rather not know. The worst I've heard unit's say about the nurses is that not all of the floats are ACLS certified and have to refuse some patients in our PCU. They seem to get decent assignments, as I have as a PCT so far. I really enjoy the change every day... I never what I'm going to get, NICU, PCU, CSU, ED, Med-Surg, etc... I am starting as a graduate nurse on a med-surg in 2 weeks and I am looking forward to it. I think it will be nice to have a team of people who I can REALLY get to know and work alongside on a regular basis.. not to mention, I will have a HOME unit and a locker (YAY!). I think I will miss floating though.

Wow! The first place sounds just awful. The second sounds like heaven. I floated for two years as a CNA and it was somewhere in the middle, but closer to the good. Everyone was glad to have help, no politics but I knew everyone just well enough. By the time I graduated I knew pretty well which unit I wanted to settle into and was there a long time.

I have found my home in the float pool and couldn't be happier!!! Kudos to other float nurses out there!!!

I've been floating for years...wouldn't have it any other way. Homeless is the way to go!

Y'all make it sound fantastic! I hate getting stuck in a rut. I think I will start looking into floating.

How times have changed! Way back in the mists of time when float pools were a common thing in hospitals the attitude that prevailed in the places I worked was that the float pool nurses were the elite. Why you might ask? Because they had to have a large array of skill sets, mental flexibility and knowledge to work all types of floors from L & D to CCU to the ER and the people skills to be able to adjust to the different floors. To be a float pool nurse was da bomb lol.

I have only worked float pool and it is my "home" without a home. I recently worked on the same unit for three shifts in a row and had the same patients all three nights and it was almost torture

We have such a hard time getting floats to come to our floor, our charge usually gives them the best assignment. The floats are scared of having vented patients so we make sure they avoid them. I don't know if floats can refuse to work on a floor everywhere, but they can at my hospital. We treat them well, because our float pool is teeny, and we are forced to work enough overtime as it is.

I used to be THE float nurse at my hospital back in the day. I also doubled as the admissions nurse when all the units were fully staffed. It was a pretty sweet position on the surface---my shift was 11A-7P on weekdays only. So why did I quit? Because I was spread far too thin and got the absolute WORST assignments whenever I had to take a team. Sometimes I had 100% patient turnover in four hours! I was also expected to give all the other nurses their breaks, which meant I almost never got one myself until about 3 PM, which was usually when I'd be assigned to and have to take report on a whole new group of patients, instead of the ones I'd been caring for since they arrived on the floor. So I really didn't get breaks, let alone lunch.But what really did me in was an assistant department manager on M/S who for some reason had taken a dislike to me as far back as when I was a CNA at that hospital. She was constantly looking for mistakes and chewing me out for some real or imagined infraction. One day there was a missing Demerol syringe and she was on me like a duck on a chunk of bread, all but accusing me of taking it out......and I didn't even have a set of keys yet. The nurse who did it immediately owned up, but the way that woman looked at me was like "Damn---I thought I had you!"I wound up having a quiet nervous breakdown in my DON's office a little while after that incident and never returned to the floor, but in retrospect I think my issues with being the float nurse were being pulled in too many different directions in too short a time, and receiving absolutely NO support. As far as the hospital administration was concerned, I was nothing more than a pack animal. Granted, it didn't help that I had some undiagnosed mental health concerns and wasn't really suited for a job that required me to adapt to constantly shifting priorities and multiple demands at the same time. But the other floors were happy with my work, they trusted me, and their managers ALWAYS told me they were grateful for my help so I couldn't have been all that terrible.

I got hired into a float pool in the hospital - I didn't mind it until I got floated to the ED (with no orientation) - nearly made me quit straight up and I quickly found a home on an M/S Onc floor - I get along with the nurses really well (I was floated there frequently because we are very short staffed) and I really like it. Way more than the extra $3.50 an hour

I'm so happy and thankful whenever we get a float nurse .

Float nursing -pure bliss !