I feel so ashamed hearing numbers like 30 and 50 per nurse - I have between 18 - 22 patients, am going into my 1st month on the job and I am drowning. Is this not the career path for me?
I worked so hard to try to find a job - and I cannot even manage (on average) 20 patients. I work 2nd shift - I get my cart organized, label which patients on my hall get FSBS and skin treatments, and I finally thought I had it - I was able to start charting at 7pm one night last week. But then there was a new admit. Then a fall. I spent at least 45 min. getting the fall situation under control and montoring the patient, then I have another patient yelling at me (yelling - literally - NURSE! NURSE!) which upsets the other dementia/alzheimers patients on the floor - so one or two of them start screeching too - in the middle of all that I have a CNA come tell me one of the alzheimers patients took their clip alarm off their shirt and threw it across the room under a bed (we are out of bed alarms - hense the fall with another patient) - and while I am monitoring the fall patient I have another patient telling me he is in pain and will wait outside for me - I told him thats fine, I will be out in a few minutes, I had to monitor a resident that had fallen.
He gets upset with me - starts badmouthing me as he wheels away because I dont drop everything and give him his pain med - so after I am done sorting out fall risk person I have to go sort things out with irritated pain med person - then man with alzheimers keeps trying to slide out of bed and by then it is about 830 and i havent started my 2nd med pass. A new patient doesnt trust our facility and requests that I bring in each of the packets of meds that I am giving her because she doesnt believe that I am giving her the right thing - so that takes 20 minutes because she is new and I have to go to the other side of the building to receive her meds from the pharmacy drop off that happened at 7 as well.
I dont want to compromise patient saftey - but I am not getting off my 2nd med pass until after midnighte - the 3rd shift nurse has been there over an hour and its time for him/her to pass meds and I still have the cart because I dont want to compromise a patients saftey because of other issues I had to deal with earliier in the evening.
I am learning a lot. I LOVE my residents, but I dont know how to improve on my med passes. I am even multi taskiing and doing more than one thing while I am passing out meds (vital signs, assesments skin preps) while I am in the room with one patient - and I am not staying and talking to them for any amount of time at all. I leave every nite at the earliest midnight - on Friday I didnt getoff work until 230. And I still missed stuff - or I feel I did anyway. I just dont know how to get it all done and not compromise the patient saftey. People keep telling me I will get into a routine - when? Things are always going toc ome up. Its never gong to be smooth - so I need to adjust. Any advice/support is appreciated. Im drowning.