charge nurses

[wsu.rn]

The first hospital I worked at the charge nurse was a perm, full time position. She rarely took pt's unless needed and was responsible for holding down the floor. She was a resource if needed. The hospital that I am at now uses the regular nursing staff as "resource nurse" They are counted in staffing and take the same amount of patients which can be anywhere from 8-10 tele med surg patients. I find it difficult to go and seek out the resource nurse for advice or help when they are usually extremely busy of their own. The nurses keep saying that the hospital would never pay for a full time charge nurse position. Just curious how other hospitals handle this issue.

[Agnus]

I'm with you PRNNURSE on this one. As charge I take patients and am still a resource. PLEASE PLEASE come to me with your questions comments concerns feed back or your needs for feed back or to just bounce something off me. Like you said much easier to prevent a problem.

A few weeks ago an RT overstepped his bounds and gave a psyco family member some informationa about a CBC report then the RT came to me and said I should clean up his mess. (KILL)

If your charge nurse cannnot handle her job as resource for you she needs to delegate more and speak up. However, we get very good at juggling multi tasks very quickly as charge. Don't underestimate what she can handle. True some days are worse than others but that is why we all try to support each other.

[live4today, RN]

I've worked a lot of shifts in the past as Charge Nurse. When I worked evenings and nights, I always chose to take a patient load equal to the nurses.....again, that was my choice...not all the Charge Nurses would do this. When I worked dayshift, I would take up to three to four patients tops, assist other nurses as they needed me to, do admin stuff, chart, help the unit secretaries with doc orders, take phone calls, pass pain meds when another nurse couldn't get to her/his patient, etc. I never felt really stressed since I'm a high level energy person anyway, so the more on the go I was, the better for me. Besides....the action kept me alert and oriented times three....you wouldn't want to have ME get tired on a shift. :chuckle