Am I a baby or is this outrageous?

[sweetcheekers]

Maybe I am just weak and inefficient. If I am, I have a good excuse. I am a new nurse and certainly have a lot of room for learning to juggle tasks in an efficient manner to better manage my time. But, this seems over-the-top to me. I work with another nurse who is also new and she told me that the other day she had 4 patients + a brand new surgical who had just returned to the floor and the nursing supervisor also gave her a new admit. In our facility a fresh post op means vitals and assessment of dressing every 15 minutes x2, every 30 minutes x2, every hour x2 then every 4 hours. A new admission takes a minimum of 45 minutes just to do the admission paperwork (its on computer and a very lengthy assessment and history). It would take longer than 45 minutes if there are many orders to put into the computer and add to the kardex. Anyway, to make matters worse this is an RN who has less than 9 months experience and they placed these two patients on completely opposite ends of the unit. All I know is now I'm having serious second thoughts as to wether or not I want to cross train to this floor. What do you all think?

[Town & Country]

Well at least you would know what you were facing.

They should have, at the least, put the new admit and/or the post-op in her group...if they were on opposite ends, they should have redistributed the assignment.

JMO.

[SharonH, RN]

It's not outrageous but it is a very poor way to assign patients even for an experienced nurse.