Nurses, do you routinely do beds and baths?

Nurses General Nursing

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  1. Nurses, do you ROUTINELY perform beds and baths for your patients?

    • 61
      Yes, all the time
    • 35
      No, my institution provides an NA for this type of patient care
    • 6
      I am assigned 1 or 2 along with my assignment
    • 10
      Only if the NA calls off

112 members have participated

Do you routinely do beds and baths along with your patient assignment or does your hospital institution provide an aid to deliver this type of care? I am an RN and at my new place of employment, I am responsible for beds, baths, mouth care, lunch and dinner delivery and tray pick up, and more often than not vitals and blood sugars. The typical patient assignment is about 5 primary with usually a new admission or two. When we do have an aid they usually only do one or two beds and baths along with vitals and blood sugars.

As for acuity, some very sick patients. I would estimate that only 2 of the assignment can perform these activities by themselves. Also responsible for feeding the 1 or 2 patients who are total feeds or very limited in their ability to feed themselves. Is this the norm?

As a recently former CNA it is so cool to hear you nurses who see doing a bath as part of your job and an opportunity to do a physical assessment on your patients. I love to hear about team work, it makes for such a more pleasant working environment-especially when it's crazy busy. It helps when the people you work with don't take themselves too seriously. God bless the load of ya!

0 Votes

I haved worked many many places through agency. My favorite place to work was a inpatient hospice unit. A small 12 bed unit, the biggest assignment I ever had was 4-5 patients. We did everything. Sometimes we had a cna, sometimes we didnt. We did oral care, baths changed linens and fed patients. I loved that unit. Of course everyone had "moments". But everyone worked together for the most part and as agency I felt welcomed to this unit. If there is time, on a regular ms unit I will give a bath, change a patients brief, feed them, whatever. I actually feel as if total pt care is real nursing. Like I am taking care of the patient as a whole.

I know many nurses who dont mind giving baths, changing briefs etc. But I know many more who do mind. I dont undrstand how we can be good nurses if we dont do these kinds of things if we have the time.....even if there IS a cna. I have actually worked with a nurse that was sitting at the desk and answered the call light via intercom . The patient needed some ice water. She was actually sitting there doing nothing and got up to hunt a cna down to do this task. It made me so angry.

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I will be working with another RN for 4-6 weeks. Some places offered to let me go through the new grad orientation (which I thought would be great).

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I work on an oncology/gmed floor. Days assignment is 4 or 5 patients and we're responsible for total care. I much prefer that to having double the assignment but not doing the baths. I find baths are a good time to converse with patients and do your head to toe assessments.

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Making beds is part of the equipment we work with as healthcare professionals. This question has to do more with your additude, in my opinion. Someone mentioned the word team, which is an important dynamic at any setting.

I'm not a nurse yet, only a CNA going to school RN in 2005. If a new admit is coming, someone has to make the bed. If many admits are coming I would have no problem in making any bed. I usually see a nurse participating in making a bed when the PT is out of the bed. Sometimes you don't have much of a window to change linen if the PT is a TOTAL. You have to take care of your back with proper posture when you make a bed.

If you saw a doctor making a bed, would you stop them and take over? A bed is part of the equipment, duh. I'm not "holier than thou." :-)

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So it looks like about slightly more than half of us do routine bed and baths. Thanks so much for the info everybody. This BB is a great resource to see how other institutions( and of course staff) provide patient care.

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I'm a CNA and where I work I am responsible for ADL activities....including baths, linen, vitals, Blood sugars, feeding, turning, and changing incontinent patients. Our ratios are obviously a lot better than where you work. We have 1 nurse to 4-6 patients on first shift and 1 CNA for 10-15 patients. Although this weekend I had 23(EEK) Anyhow the nurses usully have time to help me out a little which is fine when I need it. But I work with some wonderful nurses who just jump in and do it before I get a chance. But then there is the extreme that call me out of a bath to take ice water to someones room. (A little extreme) Anyhow I think it all depends on management and if they are giving you that much of a load they need to rethink the hiring of new staff.

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Specializes in Critical Care and ED.

I work in an ICU in London and we have to do everything for our patients. We only have one Healthcare Assistant on the unit and she is usually too busy to help but you try to grab her if you can. We don't have Respiratory Therapists in England either, so we are responsible for all vent changes, nebulizers etc as well.

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We also do our own baths, I work nights ICU and we don't have any CNA's. We routinely assist each other in the baths. It"s a small unit only 6 beds. and there's only 3 RN's on nights. We are responsible for EVERYTHING. Plus we have to cover the rest of the Hosp for staring IV's, Lab draws if the lab tech is not available. and anything else the Super can think of. (so she doesn't have to do it.)

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