Charge nurse taking patients

Nurses Safety

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So I am wandering how it is at other places but at our hospital, they didn't want the charge nurse to take pts anymore, but now they have changed it and said the night shift charge nurse will take pts now and it will just depend on the number of nurses/patients on day shift. When our night shift charge nurse didn't have pts, she would help with admits and blood sugars and really anything and it was so much more easier but now management says they can't justify the night shift charge not having patients

We recently made a change to where we have no independent charge nurses. We have never had them on nights (and run with 4 patients if staffed or 6 max if not). Now they are taking away the independent day shift charge. They say that because of the ACA we no longer have the money. I personally think it has to do with our union contract comming up this summer. Either way its not safe for the patients or the staff, which they say is still the number one goal. My unit is a nuro unit where it is not unthinkable to have three total cares and one moderate care patient as an assignment.

Specializes in Orthopedic, LTC, STR, Med-Surg, Tele.

We have a certain census cutoff for being charge w/o assignment during the day and evening shifts, if census dips then the charge takes an assignment. I'm charge at night and I get a full assignment. It's not too bad. If I had no assignment for 12 hours, I'd feel like such a princess!

Specializes in ER, progressive care.

Where I used to work (progressive care) the dayshift charge never took an assignment unless they were really short...then they would take a couple of patients. They would round with the doctors on all of the patients and help with admits/discharges and other things that needed to be done.

On nights, the charge nurse ALWAYS took a full load, which was 4 patients. If we were short, usually the charge would still take 4 and everyone else would take 5, that way the charge nurse could help out with things on the floor. I was often in charge on my unit and there were times were I would take 5 to help out the other nurses...I would also (sometimes) find time to do all of the admission data on all of our admits just to help out my fellow nurses.

I now work in the ER and the charge nurse does not take any patients. They are responsible for directing the flow of patient traffic and assigning beds. The charge nurse is our resource person and will help out as needed, such as starting a very difficult IV or something.

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