Charge nurse/ years of experience

[shortstuff31117]

Hi all

just wondering - in your facility, what are the requirements for charge nurse?

I work in a small LDRP unit, we have 4 main charge nurses on each shift. My manager wants to train another nurse to do charge sometimes, however this nurse only has 3 years of experience. The rest of us don't feel like it's a good idea.

So I'm curious about what other facilities are doing? Thanks?

[melizerd, ASN, RN]

Anyone with over a year of experience can charge on our floor. It just rotates through and everyone takes turns. No additional pay for being charge and you still take a team of patients, just 2-3 during day shift and 3-4 on PM, but a full 6 on NOCs. It works fine for us. We are a busy med/surg oncology floor.

[dirtyhippiegirl, BSN, RN]

Anyone with a pulse and off orientation could charge on my old unit. High turnover burn unit with mixed acuity patients.

[klone, MSN, RN]

When I worked inpatient OB, if you had more than a year, you could do charge. I think three years is plenty.

[sistrmoon, BSN, RN]

They make them charge right out of the starting gate here, with no training or orientation and full patient load, no diff.

[Morainey, BSN, RN]

3 years sounds like plenty of experience to me. Where I used to work you had to take a BS class (which was really just an excuse for our PhD educated nurse educator to talk about herself, unfortunately) and you got an extra $1/hour, made the assignment, assigned admissions, and were out of assignment on days and evenings.

[anon456, BSN, RN]

one year experience with good knowledge of the type of patients we get, safety-minded, and the right personality.

[NicuGal, MSN, RN]

1-2 years on the unit.

[Gooselady, BSN, RN]

1 - 2 years.

Lack of experience is an issue, but if the rest of you are on the floor, she can use any experienced charge as a resource. My last hospital job had everyone with enough experience trained to do charge, including the new-er nurses. It wasn't like they had to know everything or make all the 'charge' decisions all on their own, they could rely on the rest of us for direction when necessary.

[NOADLS]

Over 2 years. Some exceptions have been made where above satisfactory performance is the main consideration.

[TheCommuter, BSN, RN]

just wondering - in your facility, what are the requirements for charge nurse?

My facility has no set-in-stone requirements for charge nurse. A newish nurse with less than a year of experience could be offered the charge nurse role if (s)he makes good judgment calls and has the tendency to remain calm.

[AJJKRN]

Our faculty requires that you have two out of three...a level III or more, a BSN, or an approved certification in your specialty. The levels are based on our clinical nurse ladder (all nurses regardless of experience are a level II until they go through the steps to "level" if they ever choose to, which comes with a monetary percentage pay increase each level up after II but you have to have two years experience to even be eligible to try and level), and as most are aware, you have to have at least two years of experience in your specialty before even applying to test for an approved specialty certification. Works pretty good for us I think. It's clear expectations to be fair across the board and usually the nurses who put the effort into being charge eligible have good work ethics and leadership qualities.