PCT/Nurse Tech: How many patients do you have?

Published

I started working as a nurse tech recently on a med/surg floor. I am assigned 12 patients. I find that I can barely do it. And even at that I go home feeling like I didn't do as a good a job as I knew I should have.......but I just run out of time becuase it is such a huge load.

Usually about half of the patients are Total care and about half are on isolation, so some are both. There are 24 patients on the floor with 2 techs. I am finding myself very overwhelmed. I'd like to hear about how many patients you care for, if the nurses help you out much and some tricks to make my life easier.

Thanks for all the replys. I work again tomorrow. I guess I don't feel so alone knowing you all did it but it is still pretty overwhelming.

I want to give great care and I just can't do it with this amount of patients. I will check with the other techs when I can, to see if they feel the same, although from what I've noticed they just deal with it by ignoring the patients and not doing things they definately should be doing. I can't do that.

One thing that really ties me up are the patients that think I am their waitress and continually ask for things like butter, tea, chocolate milk, where their nurse is that they called a number of times, when their doctor will be in, the phone number for such and such etc.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
+ Join the Discussion