All floor nurses... please help me!

[TigerGalLE]

Ok floor nurses.. I need to know something. I want to know how your floor handles discharges and admissions. Ok say you have 3 discharges in your group of pts... will your charge nurse slam you with admissions? So say.. you discharge 3 patients.. this leaves you with 2 patients. You pick up an extra pt at 1500 due to a nurse leaving. You already get one direct admission... So now you have 4 pts.. Would you still get the next admit even though you just got one? Or would a nurse who has 5 patients already get the admit??

I'm wondering because.. Today I discharge 3 pts back to back... boom boom boom.... then pick up a pt at 3. then get a direct admission and an ER pt both within 5 minutes of each other... Other nurses who already have 5 pts are sitting around drinking coffee and I'm running like a chicken with my head cut off.. What do ya'lls charge nurses do? I get so sick of this happening all the time!! I just need to know what other floors do..

Tiger

[ShayRN]

Nope, I would never do that to someone. Even if another person had 5 patients, she would have gotten the next admit. With Jacho standards on discharges being what they are today, a discharge can be just as complex as an admission. Especially since we ALL know that the doctors don't do what they are suppose to when they d/c their patients. 3 discharges and two new admissions is too much to ask of anyone.:angryfire

[lorilou22RN]

I work in an ICU where we can have up to 3 patients, typical is 2 tho. and yes if the rest of the staff are full and I have the open bed then I'll get the hit. It has happened when I started with 3, transferred out 2 and got 2 back. Not optimum, but sometimes that is the way it is. We also, do not have techs, so my fellow collegues help with admits. No way does any one sit around drinking coffee, if we are getting patients. We all work together to get it done. I love my crew!!! Sorry yours doesn't work quite like a team. Good luck next shift.