At my facility our shift times are 6-2, 2-10, and 10-6. There is no overlap time between shifts. Last night I worked 10-6 and was the only nurse on for the entire shift. It gets unbelievably busy in the morning and this morning was no exception, I ran from 0400 until 0545 when I finally was able to sit down to fill out my report sheets and enter in my I&Os and such. At exactly 0600 I hear "we need a nurse down here! Someone's on the floor!" Neither of the day nurses had arrived yet, but the day shift aides were out on the floor already. I let out quite a few "colorful" words under my breath and since I was the only nurse on yet I went down to the room. A few minutes later the day nurse came in the room, asked the resident a couple questions and then left the room, no offers to help or anything. She than proceeded to go about her day without offering to assist in any way even though technically the fall happened on her shift. I did the entire fall report, investigation, updated the MD, as well as assisting with getting him up (only one aide came to help, the one who actually found him went about her day as well!), getting his vitals, and taking care of the skin tear on his hand. I punched out an hour after my shift ended. It irritates me that the oncoming nurse wouldn't lift a finger to help, especially since my shift was over, I had been the only nurse on all NOC, never got to take a lunch, and ran my butt off. I know I know, that's an everyday thing in LTC, but had the roles been reversed my first question would have been "what can I do to help?" Or offered to help by calling the doc and taking care of the skin tear. I would never dump the entire thing on the previous shift nurse and I'm appalled that this day nurse did just that!
