What is your Nurse to Patient Ratio

I'm curious as to what state everyone is working in? I went to nursing school in California, as far as I know they are the only state that has a nurseatio ratio law. I wish every state had that. Med/surg was 5-4:1 in cali. I'm in Louisiana and the hospital I work at does 6:1 with no regard to pt acuity.

At the hospital I work for in Texas our nurse patient ratio is 1:5-6 depending of if we are full or not. I don't like it all our patients have multiple morbidities and it's hard. Our charge nurses are lazy and don't know how to organize the patient nurse ratio.

6-7 pts. i think the the nurse to patient ratio should also depend on acuity of the pts.

I am in California. When I did my orientation I'd have 6-7 patients on my own. And several times I'd have two different patients in isolation (One for CDiff, one for MRSA). I am going to double check CA ratios, because hosp was telling me it was 6-7 and that it was ok because I had a preceptor (whom was never around because he always was being pulled into different part of hospt!) . I was on medsurg floor with some very needy patiets.

ITA that the patient ratio should have to do with pt acuity. On more than one occasion, I have had 5-6 patients and 3 of those were high acuity patients. It's scary and I get nervous just typing it. LOL

Im from Cincinnati, OH and i work on a renal failure/kidney transplant 7a-7p. from 7-3 we have 3-4:1 and from 3-7 we have 4-5:1. I know the night shift can have up to 6:1 starting at 11p.

5 to 1!

Day shift might start out 4:1 to 6:1. Evening shift starts 6:1 and midnight shift could have as many as 8:1. However we don't have any consideration of acuity. I could end up with five of the worst patients on the floor while another might have 5 walky-talkies.

I work on med/surg tele floor in Massachusetts. On day shift we have 4 or 5:1, eves 5 or 6:1, nights 6 or 7:1, can take up to 8. We almost always have CNAs and secretaries. On noc one secretary for the whole hospital, so Rns often have to enter all the orders themselves. I wish the supervisors took acuity into consideration, but they usually don't. Assignments are made relying on numbers only. They do try to give you the same pts from previous day, and they group patients into blocks of nearby rooms.

The acuity score system that COBBER describes on pg 2 makes a lot of sense. I would like to see it applied in my hospital.