How many patients are you assigned?

I also work on the ortho floor and have been a RN for a year and I think this floor has sucked the life out of me. Pain meds, call bells, 10 pts each nurses pulled and no aid. This floor really has me to the point of quitting nursing all together. Good Luck everyone and throw some my way .

on our ortho ward we have usually 5 pt during the day and about 8-10 on nights our ward has a max of 31 pts

Amen! I am in a VERY similar position. I spoke with a counselor and realized that, until my contract is done in one year, I have to learn that there is A LOT that I cannot control (i.e. staffing). Therefore, I am no longer going to go the extra mile, sadly, unless it serves my interests. In addition (and MOST importantly), I need to maximize the opportunities that ARE available to me (i.e. flexible scheduling, using my paid time off, etc.). I wish you lots of luck! Be well!

i know waht you mean. had 7 pt's today 5 were ortho's and they dumped 2 medical's on our floor. i gave a total of 26 PRN's today (pain meds and antiemetics) i didn't even start charting until 2pm. can't believe i got out on time don't know how the heck i pulled that off. plus i was on like 2 hrs of sleep. drank caffiene late last night. i am so shot now. ahhhh the joys of nursing... lol no i really do enjoy what i do. i only have crappy days like this once in a while

At the hospital I work at on the ortho floor, there is CNA's on the floor. For RN's, they have 4-5 patients and an aide( the aide may have 6-12pts tho). The RN's there would never get 4 or 5 patients that were all total care.We go by acutity, maybe 2 of the 5 patients assigned. RN's at my hospital seem to get stressed from having too many post-ops or er admits, than total care. But the CNA's help out with the total care,but if the floor didn't have any CNA's, each nurse shouldn't have anymore than one total care, but we all know that isn't always the case. Good Luck!

wow. lucky them. yea we have nurse's aides...they come up to us asn ask for 3 to 4 pt's out of our 6-9pt load. sometimes we get dumps like medicals that belong on another floor. like wound care or urology or even oncology. so not all are ortho's .we do get a lot of totals. sometimes i wanna scream. and i have cried and i no there are others out there that feel my pain. not all of us work in places that are like country clubs. well in my dreams i do ...lol

I work on an ortho/med-surg unit (am still in orientation), and we have 3-4 pts during the day or evening shifts, and 5-6 during the night shift. Most days there is also a "resource nurse," who doesn't have an assignment but helps the other nurses. During the day and evening, it is 1 CNA to 2-3 nurses, and during the night it's just 1 for the typically 3 nurses on the floor. Luckily, we have ceiling lifts in each room, for patients who are unable to bear any weight, which saves time and our backs. I feel even more fortunate now to have a managable nurse-patient ratio. I really feel for those of you who have 10 pts! That would be incredibly hard, I can't imagine how busy that must be. Some days I have a tough time with 3-4. I can't imagine having so many, in the midst of getting surgicals and doing discharges.

well i have some good news. now that we just started a new program "center for excellence" for total joints also called "Joint camp" if u want to know what i mean by that use a search enging and check out. there's several video's and articles about it and know i am seeing how its so successful. anyways to promote better pt sats we our director redid the numbers or the grid as we call in (nurse pt ratio) it is so much better. we don't have as many pt's and we get to keep an extra CNA. last shift i worked i started out with 5 pt's (most common) today was 6 but my fewest # of assigned pt's was 4 plus 2 CNA's. OMG can u imagine. i keep waiting for someone to pinch me and i'll wake up... lol. if u read one of my previous my usual assignment was anywhere from6-10. huge difference. even changed my mind of transfering out to a different unit. but looks like i'll be staying a bit longer

p.s. sorry for the legnth of my comment...i hate being one of "those" lol

I used to work Joint Camp and we had a total of 5-6 pts while we get 1 CNA for up to 10 patients. The idea of Joint Camp seemed great to us when it was proposed and first started but, the families seem twice as demanding, the patients think that after a " major " surgery they'll have no pain. They all think they are at a hotel. It was awful. I had to move on. I still get ortho patients as our hospital has combined ortho/neuro with med-surg so we are all one unit now. I am at this point so burnt out I am looking for a change to community/public health. I still plan to keep a casual position though. Although the type of work burnt me out I still love nursing and as I look back on all the patients I've cared for I feel good about the differences I've made. I hope your version of a Joint Camp works out better. Be sure to ask if patients are told about what to expect after the surgery and what is expected of them and their coaches. Find out what kind of patient teaching is given and who gives it. I hear a similar Joint Camp down in Florida was very successful.

melinurse-
so far our program is working out great. most of our pts go home and do home pt with a visiting nurse after 3 days in our hospital and skip SAR. we have our exceptions, of course. every pt is different as u all know. for example an 85yr old female with a THR who lives alone and wasn't that stable to begin with is not going to go home on post op day 3 verses a 55 y r old family man. as far as pre op education goes. a few of our staff nurses do the pre op classes where we invite and encourage the pt's "coach" to join them for the course. they watch a video on TKR then THR's we tell them what to expect. give them a binder that includes their schedule and how it will paly out over their stay. and we are brutally honest. if they are expecting pain proir then its not as bad. but everybody has their drama queens. lol. we teach them about anticoag PCA's both morphine and epidural pca's, group therapy, abductor pillows, scd's, IV's, etc... so far so good. how long did you work on that unit before u got burnt out?