Whats your typical pt load?

taftiecat · Sep 9, 2004

Just looking to find out what the typical pt load is per nurse at the hospital you work at is. At mine...its about 4 pts per nurse.

at the hospital i work at typical pt load is 6-7 on nights, and 5-6 on days

shellasee · Sep 9, 2004

Wow,

we have an RN with 3-4 on all shifts or an RN and LPN with 4-6 on days, evenings (depending upon acuity) and nights takes 6-7, but complains when they get 7!! It's a pediatric med surg unit. You should hear the complaints when we have to take 6 on days and eves. We should be counting our blessing it looks like!!!! 7 years ago it used to be an RN with 2 LPN's for 8 on days, 10 on eves and 12 on nights. That sucked for the RN!!

harley_fan · Sep 10, 2004

On days/evenings it's about 3-5. And nights can range from 4-7. Of course, this is all dependent upon acuity. I think this is the best staffing. I'd be nervous to go anywhere else and have 6 pts during a day shift!

Long Term Care Columnist / Guide · Sep 11, 2004

Working days, I usually have 4 or 5 patients, which is manageable if there is an aide to do vitals and toileting. In fact, sometimes I'd rather have 5 patients with an aide than 3 without, just because I inevitably get the LOL who has to pee every ten minutes or the confused pt. who keeps climbing out of bed. My favorite situation is when I come in at 11 AM and do only admissions and post-ops rather than taking another nurse's team.....that way I usually have only three or four tops, and I can give really awesome care because the aide is doing most of the ADLs while I do the actual nursing stuff. Then, when things change at 3 PM, I usually keep these same patients and can get all the paperwork finished because I've assessed them, gotten their antibiotics started, and done all the other "stat" tasks earlier in the shift.

That is, of course, when things work. When they don't, it really sucks, and lately there have been more days when EVERYTHING sucks. Our census, which was pathetic during the summer, has gone through the roof and our managers jettisoned our old staffing system.......we no longer staff by patient acuity, only by the number of butts in the beds. To say the least, this really blows if you've got two or three patients who need total care, or who are on the call light every two minutes, or who are unstable.......sometimes it's downright unsafe. The only saving grace is the fact that our assistant department managers are actual NURSES, and they will both help out on the floor if needed.......they'll even cover us during breaks or do an admission for us if we're running behind. So it could be worse........but I still wish we could go back to having only 3-4 max on days & evenings. I can manage 5 pretty well now, depending on whether I have help and how heavy the care is, and I've taken a sixth when I was caught up and other nurses were tearing their hair out. But I hate leaving anything undone, and more than anything I hate feeling like I haven't been able to give good care. And that happens far too often.

NurseStacey143, ADN, RN · Sep 16, 2004

My hospital is 6-7 patients. We are always a full floor.

wonderbee, BSN, RN · Sep 16, 2004

On our evening shift, typically we get 5-6 pts, with a CNA down each hall(each hall has like 18 pts). .

Is this an acute care facility? I feel sorry for your aides! On my med/surg floor, anything more than 10 pts for an aide is considered a tough night.

allnurses Guide · Sep 16, 2004

I think, on my med-surge floor, we generally have it pretty good, although lately we've been shafted on how many techs we get to have. On night shift, nurses generally have anywhere from 6-9 patients apiece, but techs

can have 10-12 apiece.

When the techs have so many patients to take care of, it's hard on us nurses. We may have 9 patients that we are responsible for the care of, many of those patients may be very high in acuity, and if we don't have enough techs to help out with toileting and vitals and such... it makes for a horrible, stressful, tense night.

generally though, work's not bad.

we have computer charting now, and computer MARS. WE don't "make out" care plans; they are done for us. Makes things a lot easier than they could be.

SandraCVRN · Sep 23, 2004

Ortho-Medical here. Acuity, what's that? LOL

days 5-6

eves 6-8

nights 8-11

We have techs,

ideally (LOL) on days,

there is one tech with one nurse, but the usual for techs is:

days 6-7

eves 7-9

nights 8-11

The hardest part about ortho is the amount of assistance needed to get these fresh post-op ups. But my favorite thing is getting pain meds q1h for those pancreatitis folks. Don't get me wrong, I'm a firm believer in pain control, but it is hard to get anything done when you have to stop every hour.

RGrif · Oct 6, 2004

Where I work (general med/surg) the day shift can have 5-6 patients , eves/nights 7-10---almost everyone works 12 hour shifts. On nights, there are usually 2 techs for 36 patients (we are always full) and they are responsible for doing all the daily labs at 0600---it is crazy. I feel that this is too heavy a load for all of us! If I have one crisis (and usually have more than 1!) my whole shift is a mess---They are taking about legislating nurse/patient ratios here too, but as someone else mentioned, the hospitals will do so by eliminating assistive personnel if they can---that isn't going to help matters at all!

chickie · Oct 7, 2004

Hi, I work in a hospital in rural Maine. Our patient load on Med/Surg is 5-6 for the day shift. This ratio has improved over the last year after an addition to the hospital and our complaints of high patient/nurse ratio, which at that time was 7-8 per nurse with full census, finally won us an increase in the budge to hire another nurse. We still have heavy assignments as most of them are postop and/or elderly needing total assistance but I can't complain after reading the ratios at your hospitals.

cbreezen482 · Oct 19, 2004

I also live in a rural area and typically have between 6-9 patients per nurse on nights. Often we don't have an aide on nights either, sometimes 1 aide if we're lucky. Time management and organization are a major factor in not getting swamped with charting. If we have no aide to do vitals at 2100, I typically pass my med's, do my shift assessment and take vitals in one swoop, which is praised by our Nurse Manager and the night Nursing coordinators.

ngfsg · Jan 23, 2005

:uhoh21: I work in a small community hospital and we are trying to retain Med/surg nurses along with attract others. Our patient ratio is 1:5-6 on days and evenings and 1:6-7 on nights. We use the team concept so there is a team leader RN and the team consists of 10-12 patients. The caregivers are RN's or LPN's with the 5-6 patient bedside care. We have two aides that work each shift and circulate through the unit of approx. 36 patients total.

We are trying to research some alternative ways to deliver the care and need some suggestions. What are you all doing out there especially anyone who is experiencing a decrease in RN applications as we are............Help!!! :uhoh3: Thanks......................