I am interested in knowing how units like mine staff the assignments. I am in a 26 bed cardiac interventional unit. Our main patient population consists of post PTCA/Stent patients, with and without femoral arterial lines. We pull our own lines on the floor when their ACT's are less than 150. The majority of our patients come back with closure devices or are radial procedures who come back with hemobands on. Up until now, if a patient with lines was on reopro or integrilin, they went to CCU (due to the increased chance for bleeding), but now they want to put these patients on our floor. We also take stable MI's, chest pain R/O MI, and any other tele patient they don't have a bed for (there are two other tele units where I work). We use heparin, Nitro (titrating), dopamine (rarely titrate, but has happened), dobutamine, amniodarone, lidocaine, pronestyl, cardizem, adenocard, covert and most other gtts. No nipride. At present, an assignment starts with 4-5 patients per nurse, and then one nurse occassionally gets 6 patients. Our patients are admitted on a day surgery floor, go to the cath lab, and then come to us. We recover them and they stay overnight and are discharged the next morning, and then we start all over with a new group of post procedures. We have a charge nurse without patients, who is bed control and usually is very busy making beds for the patients coming out of the 3 cath labs. If your unit is like this, can you tell me your ratios, as I am this units' manager and my boss says I have to staff it as other like units do and I think my nurses are already overworked. Thank you
