Rehab nurse ratios LTC

Nurses New Nurse

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Specializes in Dialysis, long term care.

Hi fellow nurses :) thanks for everyone on this site who's posts and comments got me through nursing school!!! Im posting because I need to improve at my new job ( about 2 and half months).

I started an overnight 10p-6am nursing job on a mixed LTC/rehab unit. "My side" is the rehab side with approximately 16 rehab patients and 4 LTC residents.  The other side is primarily LTC patients with about 28-30 pts. There is usually one c.n.a who takes responsibility for my 4 LTC residents and all of the other LTC residents  ( OMG its alot) along with another nurse, usually an LPN.  During the night I am primarily responsible for toilet/provide incontinent care, do vitals, answer call lights for the 16 rehab patients. And I pass meds/assess/chart on all 20 patients. On top of that I usually split the blood draws which range from 10-20.

Im newer to nursing and especially LTC and I'm looking for comments to gain insight on how to manage the workload, I usually cannot delegate because everyone is already stretched pretty thin. I love my job, it is just a lot of non stop running and I don't feel like I have time to really use my nursing assessment skills like the patients/ residents deserve.  Again I want to stick with this, but I would love some tips on how to get quicker with my tasks so I can have a$$ time to actually go through orders and give good assessment etc. Thank you so much peeps.

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Specializes in Progressive Care, Sub-Acute, Hospice, Geriatrics.

I'm sorry but what? You're doing incontinence care for 16 patients and on top of that doing your nursing duties? One aide to say the least?! Like you I have LTC/skilled patients mixed. At night I get up to 27 patients but I have at least 2 aides on my side and the other nurse gets the other 2. We also don't do blood draws, we have a phlebotomist that comes in the AM to do it. I feel like that is too much. I would understand it if you only have 5-6 patients like in the hospital. but you are doing the CNA/ RN/ phlebotomist job and you're probably not getting paid that much for all that you do.

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Specializes in Dialysis, long term care.
On 12/27/2021 at 7:58 PM, Dani_Mila said:

I'm sorry but what? You're doing incontinence care for 16 patients and on top of that doing your nursing duties? One aide to say the least?! Like you I have LTC/skilled patients mixed. At night I get up to 27 patients but I have at least 2 aides on my side and the other nurse gets the other 2. We also don't do blood draws, we have a phlebotomist that comes in the AM to do it. I feel like that is too much. I would understand it if you only have 5-6 patients like in the hospital. but you are doing the CNA/ RN/ phlebotomist job and you're probably not getting paid that much for all that you do.

Hi, thank you for your reply. Usually only about 4-8 rehab patients need incontinent care. The most time consuming part of the night is VS, I'm hoping for tips on how to streamline all the duties

 

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