Hello! We've been having some discussion on my unit about charge nurse responsibilities. During the week on day shift, our NM and ANM share charge suties. Evenings during the week, we have an ANM that does charge. Nights and weekends, it's staff nurses who step up to the charge position. I have a couple of questions for ya'll now that you have some background...
1. Does your charge nurse take a full pt assignment? Our day charge RNs rarely do, evenings sometimes, and nights always have between 6 and 8 pts.
2. What does the charge nurse do? We seem to have no set rules except that they assign beds. When they don't have pts, some of them run around asking everyone else if they are doing okay, need help, etc, and doing whatever they can. Some of them just jump in and do what needs to be done (e.g., if someone wants pain meds, they will just give the pain meds rather than tracking down the nurse and telling them to do it). And then some of them just sit on their tooshies not doing anything, not helping anyone, and never even walking down to the other end of the unit to see what is going on over there. Some have even gone so far as to refuse to help nurses, even when they don't have pts themselves! They sit in the station and read magazines, make fun of the other nurses, etc. What happens on your unit? Do you have a set of responsibilities, or is it just every charge nurse for him/herself?
