Info needed

I am trying to gather information on nursing structures where you work. Do you have charge nurses on every shift, or assistant Nurse Managers? Do your Nurse managers work mostly day shift? What if any other levels of nursing support do you have. Any info you want to share would be greatly appreciated.:kiss

[simao pt]

where i work there are the chief nurse and two reference nurses. they always do the morning shifts in the week and have the weekend free. Just don't ask me what exactly a reference nurse does because i'm still trying to figure it out (and i've been trying for over one year).

In the afternoon and night shifts one of the nurses that's working in that shift is the responsible one, meaning she handles the problems that may appear during the shifts (and she has less two patients to take care of).

Morning shift: from 8.00 to 14.30

Afternoon shift: from 14.00 to 20.30

Night hift: from 20.00 to 8.30

The nurses with fixed schedules work from 8.00 to 16.00 from Monday till Friday.

I hope this may be of some help to you, but i doubt it. Good luck.

[tuni813]

Thanks for sharing any info is helpful. Anyone else want to share???

[nurseBe]

We have a charge nurse on every shift for every unit. We also have a nurse assistant manager and nurse manager, who are mostly present on day shift. The managers take call if a shift cannot be covered and try to be present on occasion for other shift. We also have a nursing supervisor for the hospital on every shift. It is nice to have this support/references when needed.

[RN-PA, RN]

I work in Acute Care (recent name change from Med/Surg ) and there are 3 AC units with an average of 30 beds/unit. We have a Nursing Director who deals a lot with budgets, but also is involved with many other issues (staffing, education, etc.) and under her is the Nurse Manager who deals with all the day-to-day issues on the 3 units; then there's one RN who only does scheduling; there are 2 RN's who are education nurses who deal with making sure nurses pass yearly competencies, do med evals and arrange for/oversee preceptors for newly hired nurses, and keep us current with educational programs and inservices. (There are at least 150 licensed nurses who work everything from prn to pool to casual to part-time to full-time 8 hours to full-time 12 hours-- part of the reason for a scheduling nurse. You couldn't pay me enough to do her job!)

We don't have charge nurses, but they are planning to hire someone to be an admission nurse, just to do admission assessments for the units. I don't think they will initiate careplans or take off orders-- and all that comes with admissions. Just do the physical assessment and the paperwork that entails. They will be extremely busy...

Most of the managers are there during day shift and part of evening shift. I usually see them leave around 4:30 or 5:00. One of the education nurses will sometimes be around on 3-11 shift and sometimes 11-7, depending on whether a new nurse needs a med eval, and she'll spend the shift with them.

There's also an RN who's "above" our nursing director, and an RN above her who I think is VP of nursing. They deal with our hospital's board of directors, CEO, consultants, and are involved with major decisions and any problems on our units and other hospital-wide units.

[Charity, RN, APRN]

We have a charge nurse every shift (12 hour) and a nursing manager. She is manager over several units and is in house mostly week days 7-4 (on call 24/7) If there is anything that the charge nurse needs, there is an assistant director of nursing available for the off shifts.

We used to have one "sister" unit with one shared manager. She recently added 3 more units within the past year, starting one from scratch with 3 weeks notice (one guess who is getting pulled to staff this puppy?). We help each other out as needed. The only real problem with this system seems to be on night shift when we have the ADONs. Instead of having one boss, you might have two, if the ADON of a sister unit in another hospital wants you to send someone to staff and you have to tell her no because you are too busy. Or you do go, and YOUR ADON gets mad 'cause you went without telling her.

Generally, however, everything is charge nurse to charge nurse.

cc

[RNforLongTime]

In my unit, I work in a 30 bed CV/Trauma/Surgical ICU, we have a Nurse manager and an Assistant nurse manager. On DAY shift there is a Charge nurse who does not (usually) have a pt assignment. Sometimes on 3-11 shift the charge nurse doesn't have an assignment. Depends on our staffing for the shift. THe NM and ANM work day's, no weekends or holidays.

[tuni813]

Thank ytou sll for the great information, it's interesting to see what's going on around your parts! I am trying to see if what we have at our hospital, which are Clinical Managers should be switched over to Assistant Nurse Managers on each unit. Our CM's cover more than one unit and it can get very busy. Keep the info coming!