A local hospital that is a clinical site for my BSN students is trying to roll out “team nursing” as a strategy for staffing shortages. A lot of the travel nurses have opted to go elsewhere and/or the hospital isn’t fighting to keep them around. If I were a gambling man, I would say it is all $$$$ related.
For those who aren’t familiar with this concept: team nursing is when an RN and an LVN are “teamed up” to care for their patient assignment…together. The RN is the leader and performs duties within their scope and those outside of the LVN’s. It sounds lovely. Yeah, I tried it for about a year at the hospital I worked…it did not last. We implemented it when staffing was really ugly. I mean, some days it worked, depending on which LVN I was assigned. There were LVNs I didn’t get along with but there were RNs, BSNs, MSNs, and NPs I didn’t necessarily get along with either…I don’t judge you by your title. There are assholes everywhere. Wait! Maybe I am the asshole??? Nah…
Most of the hospitals in my area do not hire LVNs. The idea is that LVNs cannot care for unstable patients and must be supervised/delegated to. A lot of RNs I have spoke to have said, “Yeah, I would rather just do it all myself” or “That sounds like too much trouble”. I get it. Change is hard. No one, especially a nurse, likes any sort of deviation from their normal routine. I remember when we went to computer charting…OMG!! There were nurses who quit or retired. It was just too much of a change.
I know they have been talking about eliminating the LVN role because it is obsolete. I call BS. They have been talking about it for years. Decades!!! It will never happen because there are several areas in nursing that depend on LVN staff because of cost. $$$ again. Specifically, long term care (LTC) facilities. LCT cannot afford to staff an entire facility with RNs. Nope. This is the way it is in my area anyway.
I don’t know what this hospital is offering to pay these LVNs per hour, but I am betting it isn’t any better than LTC. The only benefit I can see is the experience of working in a hospital setting. This could possibly be a stretch too because the VN students where I work do not ever have a clinical in a hospital. They receive no hospital experience!! The clinical coordinator’s belief is that if most hospitals don’t hire them, then why would we waste a hospital site clinical on a VN nursing student? I would propose at least 1 clinical quarter in a hospital for the exposure and experience. I believe it would motivate some VN students to continue their education to an ADN bridge program. But what do I know?
The LVN is sometimes treated like the red-headed stepchild of nurses. Sad, sad, sad.
Staffing in my area I am sure is just as bad as everywhere else right now. It’s even more impactful because core nurses are still trying to recover from the lockdowns and high censuses of COVID patients. They are already so tired with little morale to keep them motivated. And now there are more COVID patients coming in again and the future looks bleak….again.
I don’t know if “team nursing” is the answer. I don’t know that it isn’t either. I feel like it should be tried at the very least. Some sort of solution is certainly better than no attempt at all.
