Nurse-patient ratios and team nursing

[_melissa]

I know every hospital is different when it comes to the amount of patients a nurse is responsible for and a lot of times staffing plays a large part in that. I work on a Telemetry floor and the nurse-patient ratio used to be 1:8, which is too many as far as I'm comcerned. Granted the higher acuity patients would decrease the ratio, but many times we have stable and unstable in our groups and it's difficult to manage your time with 8 patients. What do the staffing ratios look like where you work?

Recently, my floor decided to go to team nursing, where an RN, LPN, and PCA make up a team to care for 10 to 12 patients. It sounded like a great idea, but because staffing is so bad the teams are often up to 14-15 and even 18-19 when a team has 1 RN and 2 LPNs, which is unfair because the RN is ultimately responsible for all of those patients. Is there team nursing where you work and if so any tips on how you make it function effectively?

[VickyRN, MSN, DNP, RN]

Moved to General Nursing Discussion forum for better exposure.