allanismarcus

It depends on the patient's level of care. Critical care would require dressing change for a large TBSA, ( which means could be 1 to 2 hours of dressing change) monitoring the patient, fluids rescucitation, adjusting the IVF according to patient's response to IV fluid therapy. Critical care would also mean dealing with distributive, hypovolemic shock, or septic shock. Med Surg level patients are easier ( physically) but emotionally draining. It involves uncontrolled pain, dealing with contractures, acute or post traumatic stress syndrome, depression, manipulative behavior. Among the pediatric population, we deal so much with parent's guilt which results to displacement of anger to us nurses and to other provider. I can say, a typical day in BICU is slow or crazy.

Finally, we are getting better with staffing from the experiences we had in the past. Lead RN don't take patient assignments anymore (except in certain circumstances) and we already have our own unit! Yay! Thanks for the response! I would love to share what your ratio's are with the jealous nurses here. I knew that there is always a good reason why policies are made and it is always for the good of the patients!

16 years in nursing and i never filtered lipids...

Hi. I'm new here and I find this site very useful for nurses. I'm presently working in a Burn Center located in the Central California. I work night shifts and we don't have our own unit yet. Meaning, we are occupying 3 rooms from the MICU. Our unit is a 3-bed capacity but we can admit more in the med- Surg floor if needed and we have to check them Q shift and change their dressings as ordered. I work as the Shift Leader of the unit and I go down in the E.R and evaluate burns. I understand that the ratio is 1:2 for ICU level and 1:4 for Med Surg level but my question is does a shift leader takes a patient assignment.? know they are easy patients at night time because there are no change of dressings but the problem is when I have to rounds other patients in the floor and when I go to the E. R. I normally have 1 patient and usually their easy that's why my supervisors and the director want me to handle another patient from the MICU because of the low census in the BICU. My other concern is I'm not a heart nurse and I'm not comfortable taking care of their patient. Another is, I'm sometimes off from the unit and what if I get a major burn? One time, I had to admit 70% 3rd degree burn by myself alone. That was hard because patient was hypothermic. I had to be fast putting the dressings on. ICU nurses came finally to help me..but what if they're coding and busy? I really love burn nursing because i've been doing it for a long time but sometimes I wanted to quit. Can somebody give me the proper staffing for the Burn Center? I need something that is a fact not just an opinion like for example what does the State or Federal require? I've been surfing the internet about this and I couldn't find the answer for this. I hope that somebody could help me with this because if I need to voice out, I want rational reasons and facts. Thank you and More power to all of you! Lani