My hospital has recently started implementing some changes, and one of the things that they did was take away having free charge nurses on each unit (i.e. a charge with no patient assignment), and have started requiring that they take a full patient assignment on top of handling charge duties. As you can imagine things have not been going so well since this change. I'm just curious- is this a thing that exists in other places? Every place I've ever worked has had a free charge, except in emergency situations such as extreme short staffing when the charge would take a smaller assignment. If you guys could weigh in with your unit type/specialty, number of beds, and whether your charge is free I would appreciate it! Trying to gauge how realistic it is that all of our staff is so upset with this change.