Staffing shortages are temporarily alleviated with floating or redeployed staff. This qualitative study of intensive care unit (ICU) critical care nurses and floating non-critical care nurses sought to identify the pros and cons of floating nurses, and strategies to improve patient safety. Floating nurses reported concerns surrounding unfamiliarity with the types of patients or locations of equipment. Critical care nurses reported cognitive overload with doing their routine duties plus orienting floating nurses. One recommendation to improve safety is competency-based nursing curriculum and provide floating nurses occasional training/experience in the ICU.

Miscommunication during transitions of care can contribute to medication errors. This commentary describes an initiative to involve pharmacy students in care transitions services. Although the authors found that scheduling and training the students for the program was a challenge, 30-day readmission rates were lower for patients who received transitions of care services with pharmacy students versus those who did not.