What's your patient-nurse ratio at your hospitals?

We follow our professional organization's recommendation for nurse-patient ratio (AWHONN). It's based on patient acuity, so it varies.

My first nursing job assigned eight patients to each RN and an LVN with eight patients for each RN to cover. It was acute care ortho/med/surg. My current job med/surg job assigns between 3-5 patients ...sometimes less if the patients are very heavy. We have no LVNs on staff.

What I did in your position is operate in survival mode and get experience. I kept everyone alive and learned not to sweat the "small" stuff.

What are the patient nurse ratios at your hospital? What would you honestly do, if you were in such a situation?

Mine was 7 patients per nurse when I was on med-surg (night shift). What did I do? I chose to leave and started working in the OR.

Our Med-Surg unit has a 1:5 ratio in AM sift and 1:6 in the PM shift. There are rumblings that the organization may bring it back to 1:4 for AM and 1:5 for PM because of the huge increase in the amount of Falls, Infections, Subpar care that has ocurred since increasing the ratio. I would run away from any place that makes u take 7 or 8 patients. That is a lot of responsability and liability and it is your license and livehood in the line.

Green Tea,

That was actually a very smart idea. I choose to transfer to a procedural area in my hospital, and the difference is night and day. I am so much more happy now, I can provide better patient care and keep my license safe.

We've been at max 1:5 for a while on nights but recently management decided 1:6 or 7 would be perfectly fine on nights, mainly because they don't want to fill the holes with another staff nurse. I would be okay with it if our resource nurse was on our floor for our busy times but she's usually getting pulled to ED or OB at those times. Ah the joys of a small hospital.

1:2 ICU

1:3 PCU

1:5 Acute