Nursing and Health Info

IOWA CITY – A large increase in the number of patients in recent months he left the University Hospitals struggling to add nurses to the forefront of patient care. New employees must go through orientation – six to 12 weeks, depending on the unit and nurse experience which means that overtime and additional staff in place, waiting for nurses coming through the pipeline .

Hospitals in Cedar Rapids have not grown to the extent that hospital patients in the University if San Lucas is seeing 15 to 30 patients per day in recent months and general contracting is slightly higher compared to last year , officials said.

In hospitals, patient volume has increased led officials to implement the incident command system of the hospital, an emergency designation that allows them to hire nurses and get to work faster.

Several nurses said first overtime was well received, coming off a year when the number of patients have reduced overtime was rare and there was a hiring freeze. The increased workload in recent months has left some exhausted, however.

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