Charge PCT/PCA

[charley.whitmire]

Hello!

My organization is looking to improve relationships between the Nurse and PCT. We have a lot of career PCTs and they often feel that there are no advancement opportunities unless they return to school. I attended a nursing conference this month and encountered an organization who had a "Charge PCT". I was looking to see if other organizations had a charge or lead PCT and what some of their duties and responsibilities are!

Thank you for your time!

Charley

[verene, MSN]

Our PCTs clock in with a "Charge" code if training a new hire and are paid an extra $0.50/hour. It's mostly a way of giving a small perk to the experienced PCTs who are willing to undertake training duties.

[Oh'Ello, BSN, RN]

At my last job on the floor, we had charge PCT's. Essentially the Charge PCT would handle the Unit Secretary/Coordinator role and be tasked with answering the phone and doing the patient flow tracking, update boards, print nursing paperwork, transfer calls etc stuff on the off hours or in the event that we didn't have a unit sec. They could also perform these tasks if patient care was "slow" or if we had a lot of discharges, transfers and admission and the unit sec was inundated and needed help. In addition to those duties they'd stock the doors and nursing carts in lieu of doing a whole day of patient care.

Typically on off shifts the Charge RN handled those responsibilities in addition to having some kind of assignment, managing crises, dealing with central mgmt, doing narc counts etc. It was just too overwhelming to have the Charge RN also be the unit Sec, so we created the Charge PCT role, sent them to the unit sec classes and moved it off to them. It worked well especially because we always had unit sec coverage (even if there was a call off) and it was a nice change of pace sometimes for the PCT's on night shift. Our sister units loved it also because if they had a unit sec call off and we were OK with staffing, we could send ours, or a Charge PCT to do the job.

The charge PCT took over patient care for PCTs for breaks and in a pinch could essentially perform any PCT role if needed while they were charge.