Patient nurse ratios for Med/Surg and Rehab

[ckalston]

Hi,

Couple of questions. First I am wanting to find out what a other facilities are doing in terms of nurse:patient ratios on their Acute Rehab units and their Med-Surg units.

Second: What type of nursing models are most commonly being used: Primary nursing, Charge Nurse, Charge Nurse taking patients. If your charge nurse takes patients how many do they take.

thanks

[alkaleidi]

This would be better placed under a med-surg specialty topic or even general nursing discussion -- you'll probably get far more responses there! :)

[newestlilnurse2b]

I'm not actually working there yet, but the hospital that I am interviewing with etc, all nurses I have talked to on this floor say they have 1:4 or 1:5. The charge nurse takes no patients. The hospital has a stat team as well as an iv team.

[EmmaG, RN]

Sounds like a good ratio. What other support staff? Techs/CNAs? Unit secretaries?

[patwil73]

Our General Med-Surg floor currently takes 4-5 days, 5-6 eve and nights. Primarily primary. There is 1 pca to up to 12 patients. An unassigned charge. A unit secretery. Usually a float nurse. A rapid response team. An IV team. The charge nurse can request additional staff beyond what our acuity system says they should get, but they have to justify it to management.

On our Cardiac / Renal / Respiratory Med-Surg units they haven't gone to the above skill mix so days takes 5-6 pt, evening 6-7, and nights 8. Each has a pca to help out. So team nursing. Again an unassigned charge. A unit secretery. Etc.

Most don't like the first model as they feel the patients are too heavy. However, they have worked the 2nd model for a long time and sometimes have difficulty realizing they can help each other out rather than wait for a pca to become available.

Hope this helps,

Pat

[swee2000]

On the Med/Surg unit that I work on, "team nursing" is how I would describe the way assignments are done. For starters, each RN is paired up with a CNA, NI, or LPN(all fall under the umbrella term "tech"). The nurse/tech-to-patient ratio is typically one RN/tech for every 4-6 patients on Days & PM shifts. If a RN is primarying a group of patients, the nurse will not have more than 3 patients at a time on Days or PMs. As for the charge nurses, they rarely ever take a patient assignment...only when desperate times are calling for very desperate measures. Additionally, there are 2-3 unit secretaries who enter all the orders and a unit manager.