It all depends on your floor,shift and hospital. I am a new grad working on a med surg/orthopedics/surgical step down floor on the night shift. I love the variety. I feel as though I am living my dream and take pride in my floor. We also have a lot of patients on telemetry monitors so it's great. Patient ratio is 5-7 most days 5. I have a great charge nurse which really tries to balance ratios and the director that makes sure we are staffed.
I chose night shift and I am happy I did. Less meds, still have tasks to do but I love the teamwork at nights and I don't always feel like I'm running around like a chicken with my head cut off. I get admissions but rarely any discharges unless a pt wanted to leave at 8-9 ish due to a specific reason.
Like previous posters I like the fact that my patients are conscious. Yeah it's a lot to do at times and sometimes we only have 1 PCA for the entire floor but I love it so far even the bad days. I don't even think I can do ICU anymore I would rather do ER or another specialty. I love the variety but I've always loved med/surg from nursing school days
But it just depends some bigger hospital I've been to patient ratio was more like 7-9 which is insane. I wouldn't do Med surg with those ratios. No thank you. My hospital only has 244 beds.
