Emergency Department Boarding Stories

"We are a 14 bed ED with seven "fast track" curtained rooms. We regularly board the entire 14 beds, meaning anyone presenting to the waiting room has no room to go to and is treated in the hallway. We have run out of monitors for these hallway beds. The nurses normally have an assignment for four patients, but when their rooms are all full of inpatients they have to also care for the hallway patients on top of that four. ICU level patients should have one to one or one to two nursing ratios, but when they are stuck boarding in the ED that nurse is caring for not only the ICU boarder, but also several other patients."