Does anyone else feel overwhelmed these days as a CN? I graduated about 2.5 years ago with no prior medical experience. I was thrown to the wolves my first night with 7 COVID patients and no aid, and that continued for about the first year until COVID slowed down. After that, I was also thrown into the role of charge with no training whatsoever (I was originally told this was only temporary as CN, but that’s not how it turned out). I feel like our managers have no concern for what happens. On a usual night, I’m expected to be CN, take 7 patients, and orient the travelers and multi-facility nurses (internal travelers). This is a “med-surg” floor that regularly sees people entirely too sick, in my opinion, for our floor (I’m talking hanging blood in the hallways while transferring patients to the ICU, intubations on the floor, and etc). We are also only scheduled two aids for 21 patients at night, so they are having to care for 10-11 patients themselves and an RN is regularly performing toileting for pt’s and etc. Does anyone else feel this way about their floor and/or managers?
Specializes in Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation.
I feel you. I've never had more than 5 patients (we only went out of ratio here in Cali to 5 patients instead of 4 on the tele unit during the height of covid), but the stress was real. I have the experience under my belt as CN prior to covid, but it still didn't prevent all the stress and chaos during covid. Some nights were real rough with having a team of patients, responding to a code or two on your unit, trying to help other fellow nurses with their patients, all while being short staffed on nurses, CNAs, and getting at it with bed control/house supervisor on bed placement, transfers, and discharges. It's extra work on my part, but I still personally mind doing it still. If it is putting a toll on you, you should talk to your manager about taking you off as a CN. My brother used to do CN in the ICU unit but requested to be taken off the CN list when they started giving the CN a team of patients on top of having to do CN duties.
barcode120x, RN, NP
763 Posts
I feel you. I've never had more than 5 patients (we only went out of ratio here in Cali to 5 patients instead of 4 on the tele unit during the height of covid), but the stress was real. I have the experience under my belt as CN prior to covid, but it still didn't prevent all the stress and chaos during covid. Some nights were real rough with having a team of patients, responding to a code or two on your unit, trying to help other fellow nurses with their patients, all while being short staffed on nurses, CNAs, and getting at it with bed control/house supervisor on bed placement, transfers, and discharges. It's extra work on my part, but I still personally mind doing it still. If it is putting a toll on you, you should talk to your manager about taking you off as a CN. My brother used to do CN in the ICU unit but requested to be taken off the CN list when they started giving the CN a team of patients on top of having to do CN duties.