SweetnurseS

I work on a 20 bed med/surg floor where we have one charge nurse who works days 6:30 to 3 mon thru friday. We work 12 hr shifts. Our patient ratio varies depending on the census. Usually we have around 15 patients most days. Our average is 3 primary staff with atleast 4-5 patients each. I've never had more than 6 patients and with most of them being ambulatory. No CNA's. We have only one LPN full time on days and nights has 2. RN's are responsible for signing off their charts if a RN didn't have that patient in 24hrs. We also have a unit secretary who works 8 hrs, 2 per day. Night shift has 3 nurses working most nights, sometimes 2 if the census is down. Most of the time if we are busy and happen to be short staffed usually we get a float from either OB or ICU.

Also....Starbuck, that sounds like something that might work. I'm thinking if we all had a copy of the worksheet to follow when we give report. You could tell me how yours is set up? Thanks. I appreciate all these ideas.

I was asked by my manager to see if we could come up with a better solution to give and take report. That is the reason why I started this post. We also have bedside charts. 3rdshiftguy do you use kardexes? I am wanting to eliminate some of the steps. Most of us either copy the kardex and carry that around all day or make out a worksheet like I do. I'm thinking it is redundant to have nightshift make out a worksheet when the diagnosis, age, doctor, orders are on the kardex. Could you please tell me more and also.....I'm thinking walking rounds wouldn't work because all of the nightshift...usually 3 to 4 nurses want to listen to report on all the patients not just the ones they have. How do you do this? Could you please elaborate on how you do this? TIA

Another Mainer here. I live in central Maine, north of Bangor. I work as an RN in a small rural hospital on a medical surgical floor with 26 beds.

I'm looking for ideas on shift report. Currently where I work we tape report. I feel this works the best for us as we used to have verbal and took too much time. Wondering what others do and looking for ideas to improve report. TIA

Years ago the small rural hospital where I've worked for 15 yrs. did team nursing. About 8 years ago they changed to primary nursing with a charge nurse. I prefer primary nursing as I usually have 4-5 patients, I am responsible for baths, feeding, meds, etc. I know what is going on with the patients and am not constantly asking if something was done or having to check with the other team members about different things. Our charge nurse notes the orders, deals with the doctors, makes the calls to wherever, does the assignments, helps us out if needed, etc. We have one charge nurse who works 7-3 mon. thru fri. The primary nurses work 12 hrs. We don't have a big turnover of staff, most of us have been here for more than 5yrs. I'm not sure if it's the change but I feel my coworkers are just as happy as I am about primary nursing.