Do you have a free charge nurse on your unit?

[EllaBella1]

My hospital has recently started implementing some changes, and one of the things that they did was take away having free charge nurses on each unit (i.e. a charge with no patient assignment), and have started requiring that they take a full patient assignment on top of handling charge duties. As you can imagine things have not been going so well since this change. I'm just curious- is this a thing that exists in other places? Every place I've ever worked has had a free charge, except in emergency situations such as extreme short staffing when the charge would take a smaller assignment. If you guys could weigh in with your unit type/specialty, number of beds, and whether your charge is free I would appreciate it! Trying to gauge how realistic it is that all of our staff is so upset with this change.

[abixxy, MSN, RN]

At area hospitals in Cleveland, namely Cleveland Clinic- they have taken a premium pay away from the charge nurse role. We used to get paid extra while we were in this position and now are not compensated. This is a higher liability and this was the main reason why people would take the charge role d/t the increase in hourly pay.