Do your charge nurses have a patient load?

[praying_mantis]

Our hospital was closed down after hurricane Ike, so the nurses were temporarily relocated to a sister hospital. I charged on a 43 bed unit. When adequately staffed, I would have one patient of my own. When short staffed, I would have 5 of my own on top of charging. Now we are back at our old hospital, and I have been moved to full time charge. It is normal to have anywhere from 4-6 patients of your own, on top of charging. Is it the same way at other hospitals????

[praying_mantis]

Ive been advocating for freeing up the charge nurses of patient assignments for over a year. Im not scared to stand up and say something, and when I just recently accepted the full time charge position, I reminded them of that fact, and also got a substantial raise (at my request) for taking on the added responsibility. The difference between charging with one primary patient and 5 was astronomical. With one, I was available to start IVs, deal with crisis, coordinate ICU transfers, deal with difficult family members, do LVN admission assessments. With 5, 99% of my time was taken up with my own patients, leaving very little left to to actually "charge". When our floor is fully opened up, it will be interesting to see what actually happens.....

[RNKPCE]

Charge nurse doesn't have patients, unless a really rare situation comes about. 5% for doing charge but often that the headaches and hassles are greater than 5%

[Okami_CCRN, BSN, RN]

Our staffing is a little weird but here it goes... I work on a 31 bed med/surg stroke unit. Our goal is to have 5 RN's and a Charge RN. Now most of the time our staffing is good so the Charge RN will not take any patients. but if there are 4 RN's then the Charge will have to take care of 4 patients but will not take an admission or transfer. That of course is on days

Our two Charge Nurse are called Clinical Coordinators and one is excelllent with helping the RN's and techs, i mean she will do blood draws, admissions, you need help she's there for you. The other leaves much more to be desired.

On nights the Charge Nurse will take a full patient assignment.