Medical Floor Patient Ratio...

[RockiNbarbi]

This is for all those that work on Medical Departments. What is your RN/patient ratio for dayshifts and nightshifts? What is the total number of beds in your unit?

At my place of employment, we have 40 beds on the Med floor. The assignment is 10 patients to 1 RN and 1 RPN care team during dayshifts. Nights are 10 patients to 1 RN. We have been trying to add another med cart to the floor to decrease the load to 8 patients per RN. Occasioanlly there is a float RN, but with the volume of sick calls, the float resource nurse ends up on a cart. We feel unsafe - things are just too nuts and staff is quitting like crazy. Something has to be done, however it seems to be falling on deaf ears.

Thanks for your input.

[mattsmom81]

Cindy, I agree...I'd also rather have 10 patients with a CNA to help than 6 all alone...that can be a killer when they are needy and need total assist to get OOB, beaucoup meds, dressing care, and treatments, etc.

Plus women are so whiney...I'd much rather take care of men for the most part. Probably sounds like a sexist generalization, LOL... but this is what I've discovered through the years. (Of course there's always the exception...like the psycho druggie guys who take apart their beds and barricade themselves in the room...hadda few of those )

I agree Kewl, ICU is my fave too..but sometimes we gotta do what we gotta do.

[MrsK1223]

The local hospital near me and I've heard from co-graduates who have worked med/surg there that their nurse patient ration is 1RN to 12 Patients....I'm not going anywhere near there. There's better ways to make a living and not going to lose my license when someone dies or is harmed from lack of staff. And this hospital won't hire more RN's to decrease patient load for nurses...cause they think they can get by with only paying 1 RN for that many patients.

[bossynurse]

I work on a mostly surgical floor. We average 4-5 patients on day shift, 5-6 patients on 2nds and 7-8 on nights. It wasnt always that great, but our hospital is really concerned with pt satisfaction scores. We have many prn nurses and a registry system at our hospital that saves our butts a lot. I even got called off 3p-7p the other night. But we are soon to open up approx. 18 more beds so we'll see if staffing stays so comfy. I remember when I started, we had 8-9 patients on days. These are fresh post-ops! But then there are days now that you may have 4 pts but one is in dialysis, one in g.i lab and the 2 pts you have left are running you ragged. You just never know!!