How often to eval 1st 24hr vag,no complications

[whiterobin]

I have noticed a difference in my comfort level of checking my fresh vag patients every 2 hours on the night shift(I peek in, note regular breathing pattern and back out quietly) VS fellow staff members telling the patient to call if they need anything and generally not seeing them for 8-10 hours, sometimes only the initial assessment. In our hospital's policy and procedures meeting, M/S nurses are saying that they only see some patients every 8 hours, and that was during the day! When I have casually checked with my supervisor as to the hospital protacol, she says that pain must be evaluated every two hours, but to "use common sense." I find that this usually means you better have checked this often if the patient goes bad, but don't bother the patient (customer satisfaction) if nothing bad happened. Of course if the patient is unstable in any way, my evals are as often as is called for. I am going to try to coincide my visits with the Nursery nurses visits (our postpartum unit encourages moms to have babies in the nursery when the moms sleep then out to nurse...I know, not a "Baby-Friendly" hospital, but that's another issue) My fellow nurses say that if they follow me sometimes the patients say "You're not going to come in all during the night like that other nurse did, are you?" I don't want to be the one causing problems, but I can't compromise "best practice," has that changed?