Nursing Nightmare - Whats's the most number of patients you cared for by yourself?

max I have cared for during the night shift is 6...day time is 5...although the approved ratio is 1:3 per hospital..

Worst evening shift ever, 13 cardiac tele patients, one CTD, and no one would help. The charge nurse had a team of 5 and the nurse next to me had three. I still have nightmares about that floor many years later.

Back in 1979 I worked (briefly) in a LTC facility. I was the only nurse on nights, had 3 wings with a total of 5 aides and a bed count of 120. The census was usually between 115 to 120.

It was a constant up and down the wings checking on the aides, checking on my dying patients (seemed to have at least 2 or 3 a night who were hanging on by a thread) to keep them medicated, checking to make sure the aides hadn't left the back doors unlocked when they slipped out to smoke since I had encountered an intruder one time who was stealing bedding and clothing from a patient, and hoping to not find an aide curled up in bed with a patient taking a snooze. Yep, had that happened too.

That was a very long month. The final straw was the night an aide discovered a patient dead during her last set of rounds and I was cussed out by the supervisor, the on call doctor and the justice of the peace for "disturbing" them at 5:15 AM to inform them of the death. Since I couldn't declare death I needed one of them to come in and make it official so I could call the funeral home and notify the family. I was told, and I am not making this part up, that I should have waited until shift change to call anyone and to just move the roommate out into the hall, close the door and tape it shut so no one disturbed it until someone could come in at a "civilized" hour to declare death.