Charge Nurse vs Nurse Manager

CraigB-RN, MSN, RN · Jun 4, 2007

Was wondering what the differences are between Charge nurse and Nurse Manager.
How do their duties, level of responibilities Differ?

A charge nurse is usually in charge of a shift. The Nurse Manager has overall charge of nursing staff in the unit.

TazziRN, RN · Jun 4, 2007

What Craig said. The other name for charge is Assistant Head Nurse, or AHN.

mom4josh · Jun 4, 2007

I work nights as a charge nurse. My responsibilities are to oversee the operations of the floor, provide assistance to others, call physicians for nurses if needed, be the primary contact to the nursing supervisor, make assignments for the next shift. However, I also take a full load of patients. Our day shift charge nurse takes a partial load. However, the charge nurse on all shifts must also do RN assessments on new admissions for LVNs. I get paid for the hours worked and am not considered management level.

The Clinical Manager is responsible for the entire unit. She is not generally a staff nurse, unless the unit is extremely short-staffed. She makes the schedules, does employee evals, hires, etc. for the unit. She also is the one who does the budget and reports to upper management on performance issues. She is considered management, and this is generally a salaried position (meaning she does not get paid by the hour).

Hope this answers your question.

Home Health Columnist / Guide · Jun 4, 2007

Nurse Manager usually has 24/7 total responsibility for patient care and personal staffing unit, ability to hire and fire staff assigned to unit along with administrative reporting + acountability for everything that transpires on unit --both the good and the ugly.

Charge nurse responsibile for patient care activites on their shift, staff assignments, reporting concerns to administration/Manager, can call off staff some facilites for low census ---or request more if higher than expected accuity, documents unusal occurances regarding staff/family/patients/physicians/allied staff, but no hiring or firing of staff. They are also morale setters for unit and can help unit to shine or be avoided by staff.

Good charge nurse are invaluable to managing unit in managers absence......mine can't wait for me to return on Monday from

2 wk vacation when I called re forwarding important mgmt email. Must remember to bring chocolate!

MrsWampthang, BSN, RN · Jun 4, 2007

I work nights as a charge nurse. My responsibilities are to oversee the operations of the floor, provide assistance to others, call physicians for nurses if needed, be the primary contact to the nursing supervisor, make assignments for the next shift. However, I also take a full load of patients. Our day shift charge nurse takes a partial load. However, the charge nurse on all shifts must also do RN assessments on new admissions for LVNs. I get paid for the hours worked and am not considered management level.
The Clinical Manager is responsible for the entire unit. She is not generally a staff nurse, unless the unit is extremely short-staffed. She makes the schedules, does employee evals, hires, etc. for the unit. She also is the one who does the budget and reports to upper management on performance issues. She is considered management, and this is generally a salaried position (meaning she does not get paid by the hour).
Hope this answers your question.

I don't know how you are able to take a full load of patients. I am a night shift charge nurse and I do take patients occasionally but it is usually just one or two, and invariably when I do take patients, something happens that requires my attention right in the middle of night time med pass so my patient(s) have to wait for their meds. I'm not opposed to having patients but I'd rather be totally free to help the other nurses, aids, and RT staff and if I had patients, especially a full load, it wouldn't happen. Our day shift PCC never takes patients because there is usually too much to do to be able to take any patient assignments.