Organizeing your time

[NursingStudentHelp]

I'm a student and my teacher is going to have us take on three patients at once, to get us ready for our preceptors. Now, I know three patients is nothing to you pros, but its a daunting task for me. How do you plan your day to be most efficient?

[yoj1001]

here are some of the stuff I can share.In my working environment,it houses 43 patients, 1 charge nurse and 2 bedside nurses making nurse:patient ratio considerably big.I arrive at my area, 30 minutes of time so that I would have time to review my patients and doctors' orders.with many patients to attend, i learn to prioritize, patients that needs to be seen first. I also make sure that nursing care be done in 1 patient before proceeding to another. I also manage my time. for example at 8 am-take VS,give medications. 10-turn patients, read orders...12 -cbg monitoring..etc etc..do anything that you can do in one time so that you wont end up rushing everything to be done at the end of shift.remember you have only 8 hours to do everything.:up:

[VORB]

Use your resources, for one thing. Is there a patient care tech you can utilize to do the things an unlicensed person can do? Also don't hesitate to ask another student or nurse to help with something. Student nurses think they have to do everything themselves!

Put your pt's room numbers on a piece of paper (nursing notes/cheat sheet scrap paper, whatever) along with their med times and meds to figure out which to tackle first. I would do the most time-consuming either first or last (crushing meds to push through a PEG tube or NG tube, for instance). Find out right up front if any of your pts need pain meds instead of finding out when you're passing their meds -- in other words, combine your activities and think ahead.

Of course introduce yourself and do a quick assessment right away and get that out of the way. Then you can begin to prioritize.