patient ratio

[**LaurelRN]

hi everyone,

i was hoping to get some input about staffing ratio's. i work on a cardiac pcu. we have dopamine/dobutrex drips, cardizem, ntg, lidocaine and the like. we have no lpn's - a tele tech, unit secretary, and 2 techs for 24 pts or 3 techs if more than 30 pts. most days as a rn we are assigned 7 pts. i just feel so overwhelmed. i am a new nurse and just can't seem to wrap my head around 7 pts that are going for stress tests, direct admits, post surgical overflow sometimes, er admits, cath patients, and everything that goes into taking care of 7 patients. any ideas???

[bushbeater]

As a nurse outside the US, could you tell me the role of these unfamiliar terms:

tech, LPN, aid, CNA, NA and a HUS? Ta

[sjsch]

I started off in Florida with the 7:1 same nightmare. I ran...fast and far away. Got a per diem at a magnet hospital in Florida and that was 4-5:1.

Currently, I am in California with state mandated ratios based on acuity... and have never had more than 4:1 on tele/pcu.

Where I work now we have

52 beds with multi gtts that titrate to parameters.

We do LVADS, and 12 hour post op hearts with chest tubes and wires and keep them until discharge...

and of course we get all of the little old ladies that have any history of afib or HTN... : ) until we go on diversion...then granny gets transferred. We get post angios but the intervention caths go to the CVIU. We don't pull lines on my unit.

We have a 'war room' with dedicated monitor techs.

No LVNs, but our NAs have 13 patients on days and 15 on nights.

We have 1-2 secretaries depending on the time of day (paper charting/orders...ugh). A charge nurse at all times... with no patients. An IV team, a Lift team and from 1330-2200 we have a resource nurse for breaks and admissions.

The best part... we have dedicated open heart education nurses that work directly for our surgeons that are awesome! They go with the surgeon for informed consent, and stay to talk with the families. They update the families during the procedure. They round on the patients daily after... and best of all they do 100% of the discharge teaching. It's a beautiful thing!

[cpnegrad07]

As a nurse outside the US, could you tell me the role of these unfamiliar terms:

tech, LPN, aid, CNA, NA and a HUS? Ta

tech- a technician, meaning min. patient hands-on and mostly works with a machine of some kind

aid (or aide) is a nurse's aide, min. training and do the grunt work of nursing

CNA --certified nursing assistant, as it says

NA -- nursing assistant

HUS -- can't remember what it stands for , but that is a clerk on the floor. No patient contact, processes orders in and out, does a lot of problem-solving, phone calling, very busy.

[CarrieH]

get over the florida thing........sorry i keep getting emails from "why would anyone want to live in florida" have been here 43 years and love it but that is a different forum

I work in a level 1 trauma center 4:1 "closed unit"no floating ever!. if you have IMCU patients its 3:1. the heart surgical unit is at the end of our unit and they have 8 beds...we don't float there but they are available for questions, codes and since we get there post op patients POD 1 or 2, the RN will come see the patient to say hi and see how they are doing. The regular ICU units are 2:1 or 1:1 depending on the patients...

There are tele floors that have 1:5 or 1:7 ratio but I don't work there as a new RN of 2 years but all floors have monitor techs and on my floor there are 4 nurses, one charge nurse, and one pca after 2300, one pca is 3-11 shift..great floor, everyone helps one another and we have drips, titrations, IMCU but more caridac now than anything else...the docs love our unit and if they are a patient they come to us..I had two docs as patients last week and several weeks before the father of the chief of staff...always fun, always busy and I love my job in florida...starting the weekend shift for $10 more an hour for 13 weeks! (that is $700 more every 2 weeks!)only on nights which i love...I would not do a 7-1 ratio on any floor, good luck to anyone that can............

I live and work on the Treasure Coast. Since I work in an office, I have no idea what the ratio's would be in our hospitals... just curious, what hospital do you work in?