New grad, please Help with med surg organization!!

Specialties Med-Surg

Updated:   Published

Ok. I just completed my first day on the floor. I feel horrible, there was no structure to the day, I was just thrown out there to care for five patients with my preceptor. I know my organizational skills are severely lacking because I have never cared for five patients. I feel like I will never get this, does anyone have any updated med surg worksheets?? I have reviewed some on the site, but was wondering if anyone out there has updated examples. Any advice or input would be helpful.

Ok, this is what I think I would do, get some brain sheets, you can print them up for each patient, while

You are taking report, fill in the blanks you can find, and while you are giving your meds, try to observe and ask questions and fill in some more blanks on the paper if your preceptor will let you. I would also if you can before you start print out med sheets if you are able to do that, at my hospital I can, if not find out when your meds are and write the times down quickly. You have to organize around the times that you give meds. Also find out what treatments or tasks are the most important. Such as, hanging blood or plasma, hooking someone up to telemetry, stuff like that , the key that I have seen in med surg is prioritization, organization too, but prioritizing, that is what can make it hard sometimes because you may have 100 things you could do but what are the most important and go down the list in your head. I cant always remember sometimes if I have a minute I'll start writing things down that I need to do on the back of my brain sheet for each patient. Anyway, I hope that helps, I struggled too at the beginning, I still struggle sometimes, just remember that you can always have a bad day because you are taking care of people and stuff can always happen

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Also remember you will not be with a preceptor forever, and then you will be able to organize your own way, sometimes their way of doing things doesn't work for you, don't worry

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Okay so... I realize this is a older post but hopefully I can still get some responses, that's would be great. Here are my questions. Okay first, I love the idea of a brain sheet I used something like it in school. But for actually working do you back copies of new sheets everyday you go to work? Also, you have a different brain sheet for each patient?? So l may have 6 patients. So I have all 6sheets with me? Is that how you all do it? Does anyone have a organized way to only use one sheet? Just trying to find what will work best. Any idea would be great! And very much appreciated :)

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Dear CUMC, could you please share your brain sheet with me? I am in the same situation on my med/surg/tele floor. Thank you.

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Specializes in Med/surg, Onc.

We have lots of different options at work to choose from. I do two patients to a page. There are lots of nurses that have a sheet for each patient. If you ask 10 nurses you'll get 10 sheets. If I'm working several days in a row and get the same people back I just add to the sheet in a new color. The sheet just stays in my locker til my last shift that week then it goes in the shred bin.

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I really like this! Thank you for sharing!

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Specializes in Addictions/Mental Health, Telemetry.

Really? You are able to stick to this schedule? I have 6-8 patients....most times only 1 Patient Care Assistant for the 17 bed floor. I work on a medical/psych unit. My preceptor told me to spend only 7 minutes with each patient for assessments. It takes me all day sometimes to get the AM assessments documented because of frequent interruptions. At least most of the patients on our floor are not total cares!

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Did you find a problem with passing 14:00 mess an hour late?

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Hello CUMC RN, BSN, I would like a copy of your brain as well. I am a pre-nursing student recently hired as a Nursing assistant on the med/surg unit and I am just doing fact finding to get myself familiar with the whole process.

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Hello may I ask for a copy of this brain sheets? :) thank you so much in advance

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I stumbled onto this thread. I am a new nurse working for a nursing home. Im struggling on finding a way to organize my info on the patients. I work in the Skilled Acute Rehab portion. At times we can have up to 45 patients. Currently managing 36 with 3 CNA's and sometimes a med tech if the acuity is high. They do not have a hand off report. Not sure if anyone has experience with having that many patients some can stay a couple of months and leave or some may only need a couple of weeks. Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

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