Oncology Patient Ratios

I work on a hematology oncology floor with telemetry available as needed, many pt's in neutropenic precautions, there is 3/4:1 on days and 4-5:1 on nights.

I work on a heme/onc/BMT unit with tele and also med/surg overflow, and we take six patients each night. It sometimes gets to be a little too much, especially for a new nurse like me.

6 patients with BMT? That's ridiculous.

Rissa - is that 6-9 patients each or 6-9 patients between you and the other RN?

Also may I ask what a CNA is? (I am a UK nurse)

thanks

I work on a oncology mixed with med/surg floor. We have 35 beds on our unit and on day there are 5-6 nurses and night only 4 nurses, sometime 3 if we're short. Day nurses take 5-7 patients each and night nurses (myself included) take 9-12 patients . I really hate working on my floor b/c at night we've no secretary or helper nurse which mean we do all the admission and entering and picking orders. Being a new nurse is even harder to handle this kind of workload! I really want to leave soon and find a better working environment.

I think we should have a mandate law (like Cali) where each nurse can take up to certain amount of patients. A lot of time, I feel unsave taking care of so many patients at once.

Hii,

My floor sounds a lot like yours. Our staffing is the same for all 3 shifts. We get 5-6 patients.
If staffing is as it shoud be, we have 4 RN's. 2 CNA's (Certified Nursing Assistants) and a Clerk.
We each take 5 pt's with the Charge RN getting 3 pt's.

I feel like at Nite, it's OK this way-----I work nites--- However, I feel like they could really use more staff on Days & PM's.

Hope this helps.

I am currently in outpatient but I worked on a unit for 7 years with that exact pt. population. 22 patient unit 4 RN's and one charge on days, 3 RN's on eves, 2 RN's on nights.

Inpatient hospital Medical Oncology with some med surge overflow. Our staffing is max 5 for days. patients gettng high dose IL2 have a 1/3 ratio for days 1/4 for nights and AML patients have 1/4 on days or 1/5 on nights. Day shift charge nurse carries no patients during the week, evenings carry 3 or 4 and nights usually carry 4 or 5.

I work days on an oncology/tele floor and our ratio is 5:1. We hardly ever have 5 patients cause they know it is not ideal to do that. Usually though it is 3 or 4 patients. If we have a patient who is really sick and needs a lot of 1 on 1 (but they don't deem ICU worthy for whatever reason) they are usually very accomodating and we get our way. I have done 1 on 1 with cisplatin desensitization and that is a dream assignment (as long as the pt does not react).

I work as an aide on a strictly BMT floor. On day and afternoon shifts, it's 3 patients per nurse. For nights, it's 4 patients per nurse because we are currently understaffed for night shifts.