Horror Stories -- working short staffed

[Medivac]

New to board but let me give you the outside looking in view. I have been a paramedic for 17 years and there is a huge contiuing trend and problem of short staffing in the hospitals. Regulations actually say that a hopital in Louisiana can not go on diversion because of short staff only if there are no beds. Lets be realistic if you don't have the staff then you don't need the patients. The real horror comes in for us when we have 4 hopitals in a 30 mile radius and all 4 go on diversion at the same time. (Which also is not legal they are supposed to notify each other.) We can not just ride them around until they feel better. I am about to test for my nursing degree and see the picture clearly from both sides. One night I worked a code on a 58 yo male that was in V-fib. He converted and went into a sinus brady after the second shock. Obvouisly we went to the closest hospital where the doctor tryed to divert me to another hospital even though my patient was intubated hypotensive and bradycardic. I try my best to work with all aspects in the medical field but we still went there and the hospital administration got involved only to find that my decision to refuse to divert was legally correct. One of my goals would be once completing my nursing degree to try and wok as a liason between these two monsters since apparently neither has the answer now.