Working alone at night
I am wondering if this is normal or not. I work in a 116 bed suburban hospital alone at night. We have a busy ER, 10 bed ICU, 4 patient floors. No L&D or Pedi. Even during COVID we worked with one RT on at night. No option to call anyone. Just one RT alone. Lately we have super busy especially with local closures of other hospitals.
Typically we have anywhere from 1-4 vents on average, 1-4 bipaps between the ER and ICU. Multiple nocturnal CPAPs. We respond to all codes, RRts, do all ABGS, transport for them to CT and to and from ER, consults constantly for nurses who won't suction etc. Trach patients when we have them -and now the past year we have had to do all nebs on the floors and ICU. Taking care of the ICU and ER was busy enough and now we have usually 4-12 nebs at night.
Does anyone else think this is a lot for one person? We have tried to talk to admin and just get the whole, well it's not busy all the time! Which lately is is. Last night I worked I had a 2 bipaps in ICU, vent in ICU transported back and forth to CT, 4 nocturnal CPAPs, and about 10 neb txs total for the floors.
I feel like I'm putting my license on the line but nobody really cares.