Med/surg or Telemetry Nursing

[special1rn]

Good evening,

I currently work at the VA Medical Center. I am wondering if anyone could tell me what there average staffing ratio is on a telemetry or med/surg unit. How big the unit is, and what kind of patients do you routinely see?

[OUxPhys, BSN, RN]

It depends. The VA hospital I work at the nursing supervisors do whatever they want even though we are supposed to be a higher level of care (PCU/Stepdown). We get all cardiology and cardiothoracic pt's and pts for r/o ACS and new arrhythmia. Usually on day shift we have 5-6 RNs and night shift usually 4-5 RNs with the occasional 6 RNs. My ward is a 24 bed ward. Like most hospitals it goes by census and not acuity. Unlike most hospitals the VA does not have a sufficient float pool so usually night shift RNs are getting floated or sometimes a day shift RN will get mandated for 4 hours.

As for the medicine floors its similar but sometimes it is much worse. The medicine floors usually have 32-36 beds so they may have more RNs but the ratios are not better. They get everything: cancer, withdrawal, your run of the mill internal medicine stuff. Some medicine floors have tele but they can't do anything (push meds, etc).

There is a surgical floor that get all the other surgery pts outside of CT surgery. Im not sure what their ratios are but they get a lot of PCA pumps.