Charge Nurse Orientation

[JMBucka]

Hi!

I am a fairly new to my permanent night charge nurse role (6+ mos) in the PICU at my hospital. I recently attended a leadership conference with fellow charge nurses, nurse supervisors and nurse managers at my hospital. Our discussion led us to the importance of mentors on our nursing leadership journey. On that note, we came to the conclusion that our CHARGE NURSE orientation was not very thorough and left CN's feeling unsupported. Typically the orientation for an internal hire is 2 days shadowing a CN on a different shift and one shift with the nursing supervisor. I am wondering what other facilities have as their orientation for CN's. Do you have assigned mentors? Competencies? I would LOVE LOVE LOVE input!

-RN from MPLS

[NotReady4PrimeTime, RN]

Hmm. When I was oriented to charge on my unit, I was supposed to have two day shifts buddied with the unit manager and a day with the unit secretary, so I could learn the ins and outs of the different software used for documenting acuity, staffing, requisitioning diagnostic imaging, diet orders and so on. What really happened is she spent about 15 minutes giving me a list of things I needed to do, what time bed rounds were and where and she mapped the drive on the computer for me, then she said, "I have a ton of work to do so I'll be in the office if you need me." The next day was exactly the same, and I never did get any time with the secretary... even though we often run without one and the CN is the one to take over all their duties. There were days when the manager would override every decision I made and other days/nights when all hell was breaking loose and I'd have no back-up. "Do the best you can." I haven't been in charge now for more than a year, ever since I was in charge on a Sunday night and I put in for OT for the 45 minutes it took to report to the day shift CN, the managers and the CNS. Do I remember anything? Not even a little bit.