Assistant nurse manager vs. charge nurse

[eernuts]

Do you have both charge nurses and assistant nurse managers in your nursing unit?

[leosasha]

Have been around considerably. Have never run across that one to date.

[eernuts]

It does seem excessive. What have you seen more of? Charge nurses or Assistant Nurse Managers?

[leosasha]

I'm sorry. I misunderstood the question. Just finished my 1st cup of coffee for the day. The large hospitals I have been in tend to have assistant managers and charge nurses. The charge nurse works the floor and in theory carries a smaller pt load. The smaller hospitals usually do not have a charge nurse. Sometimes the night shift will have one though often the house supervisor will be the final authority.

[Jolie, BSN]

Do you have both charge nurses and assistant nurse managers in your nursing unit?

Yes.

There are ANMs on evening and night shifts. They are in charge on the shifts when they're scheduled for patient care, which is approximately 90% of the time. (They usually have 1 shift per 2-week pay period dedicated to office work.) Other duties include rounding on all patients every shift, scheduling, employee evaluations, disciplinary actions, coordinating with NM and other ANM to keep policy and procedure manuals up to date, provide monthly education and staff meetings and to represent the unit to departmental and hospital-wide committees. The ANMs are also certified CPR instructors and provide CPR recertification for the employees on off-shifts, as well as patients and families who need training.

Our charge nurses are strictly responsible for managing the activities of the unit on their shift.

[nrsang97, BSN, RN]

Do you have both charge nurses and assistant nurse managers in your nursing unit?

Yes we do. Our Asst manager handles the administrative stuff, and the charge nurse is rotated between staff nurses.

[blondy2061h, MSN, RN]

We have a nurse manager and assistant nurse manager that have your typical 9-5 job. They take care of staffing, hiring people, creating a schedule, discipline, policies, go to meetings, stuff like that.

Then each shift has a charge nurse. This isn't a consistent person, and can be almost anyone on who's been to charge classes. This person calls the doctor, looks through vitals for abnormals, looks through labs to make sure everything that needed to be ordered was, and looks through lab results. They'll also help the nurses with patient assignments as needed, create the patient assignments for the shift. Responsibility for IV rounds (to make sure tubing and dressings have been changed on time) and checking the crash cart is the charge's duty as well and responsibility for this rotates through the shifts.