Charge Nurses Keep Stalling, What Can I Do?

This is a process problem at your hospital. Getting a bed assignment shouldn't be dependent upon an individual ability or willingness to strong-arm or sweet-talk others in just the right way. It should be an expectation that the empty beds are going to be filled. The floor is being called with the details. I'm a little surprised that any place big enough to have formal bed management staff is still allowing any of this to happen on the receiving end. 

Consider discussing/confirming current expectations with your supervisor. It is very unlikely they will say that throwing a fit is an acceptable response to an admission or that any tactics that significantly delay the admission are acceptable. Now if -your- department is frequently making assignment errors that truly involve assigning an inappropriate bed based on acuity, that is a different issue that requires different solutions. But if that is not a common issue, then the back and forth is completely unnecessary. The patient is coming up, period, here's their details. 

Bottom line is that your job is to know where the open beds are, assign the bed when you learn of an admission, and inform the floor. You should be pleasantly professional with verbiage to that end. "Hello! This is so-and-so from bed management; just calling to get you the details on a patient coming your way." Or some such. 

Good luck! 

I see this at my own hospital. The floor managers or charge nurses sometimes drag their feet in getting admissions. Sometimes it really is them looking for appropriate inpatient orders and looking for appropriateness of a patient to be on that floor/unit. Sometimes it's staffing. Sometimes it's that EVS/Housekeeping can't keep up with cleaning rooms/beds. If they have to move patients around, rooms have to be cleaned because they were occupied. That all takes time. 

If you've got 3 med-surg patients and a med-surg floor that should have 5 rooms available, being nosy-but-nice can get things moving. It's pretty much a, "hey, I'm sending you 3, what's the hold-up?" I would suggest you should assign patients to beds and let the floors take the responsibility of rejecting the assignment. If the assignment is rejected, the floor charge can explain to the House Sup why the patient assignment was rejected. 

What's happening is that the floors are steamrolling you, because they can. Any assignment to them that they can delay or avoid means less work/busywork for them right now.

Of course the charges are going to give you pushback.  They don't want the admissions.  Is it really up to the charge nurses to "assess the admissions"?  Of course not.  They want the easiest admissions with the least amount of work.  If it's your job to assign admissions, they have to deal with it.  

In the end, it's not your responsibility to take care of the patients, its the nurses'. Specifically the charge nurse sending and the charge nurse receiving. It's 100% on them. You just make the calls and let them duke it out when patients start backing up and its the RN's that start feeling the pinch.

Coming from someone who worked at a transfer center for over a year, this right here is part of the problem:

Quote

"the job getting done by my colleagues during the other shifts because they're more blunt and firm and I don't want to come across as rude"

You're in a position that requires being a voice of authority, even if it feels uncomfortable.
"This is your assigned patient and room number. This is the ETA.”

Some people will push back or be rude, but if your goal is to network and build rapport for life after nursing school, remember: the ones who can't handle meeting expectations without getting nasty aren't the people you want to end up working for anyway.

Others might not like it, but they'll respect someone who gets things done. On top of that, you'll stand out in a good way with the nursing sup - who likely has more pull than anyone else.

Good luck!