NurseNora27

Apparently I'm in the minority here, and I know I was extraordinarily lucky, but I was hired in LTC for days right out of college. I worked there for almost a year and then was hired for full-time days on a med/surg tele floor. I've been here two years and have never worked an evening or night shift that I didn't sign up for myself by covering for someone else. It seems my hospital is in the minority not doing varying shifts. I believe I was lucky enough to be hired for straight days simply because there weren't any nurses on the floor at the time who wanted to get off of nights- since then I've seen most day shifts go to existing employees. I guess I just applied at the right time, but evidently it's possible!

We do this on my med-surg floor too but they will pull someone out of an assignment to do it at least. Still just hurts me to have to say "we hope your care was fantastic and you'll rate us as excellent, blah blah blah." Ugh

I've been in acute care only about a year and a half so I mean no disrespect whatsoever to the more seasoned nurses on here saying that this is "normal," but IMO this is flat out DANGEROUS! I left my first nursing job because I was taking 8 telemetry/step-down patients from my first day off orientation, many of whom were complex and very ill. I felt like my license was on the line every time I went into work, and I knew I was not providing safe care no matter how hard I tried. Also- It depends on what state you're in, but many have passed nurse-patient ratio legislation. I know for my current hospital, day shift RN's on my telemetry floor are capped at 6 patients (4 when we are recovering a cardiac cath pt), and in ICU, we are capped at 4.

Sounds about right! We have an instant messenger system on the computer to talk between staff, which is fantastic and saves me so much time on the phone- even so I still field about 20 calls in a shift.