So how many pts do you have?????

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:typingJust wondering, how many pts do you have?

Type unit?

With or without techs/aids?

Do you your break/lunch? Most of the time? Never?

It's hard for me to gage what the floor nurses are REALLY up against right now. I left the floor over 2 years ago.

We "usually" had 5/6 pts on days, 7/8 eves, 10/12 on nights.

Ortho/medical

with techs

most of the time got meals / breaks maybe?

Next???????

Thank you for your input.

Specializes in ER, Medicine.

Type of Unit: Medical Floor

Nights: 8 is GREAT. 9 is typical and 10 is not unheard of. :uhoh21:

CNAs: We have techs...but honestly, sometimes it makes not much of a difference.:stone

Breaks: Sometimes, usually we're so busy with admissions and things that breaks are rare. You have to just make an effort to take a break and go with it. I have a break about 35% of the time. :down:

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I work on a 51 bed Cardiovascular floor. All patients are on telemetry. On the regular tele part 7a-7p shift it's 6:1 and 7p-7a 6:1 or 7:1 for RNs. Techs on 7p-7a usually have 13 patients. 4 secretaries on days, 2-3 from 7p-11p and 0-1 at night. In the stepdown unit it's usually 3:1 7a-7p and 4:1 7p-7a. We always have one monitor tech for our floor and then another monitor tech to watch another floor from our tele room. And it's rough. Being able to go to the bathroom is a luxury!!!!

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Med/surg, mostly post-surgical w/ tele, days/evenings 4-5 (occasionally 6 but rarely), nights usually 6-7 patients. Acuity is usually medium to high. We tend to get all the ICU transfers as well. 1-2 Aides & 1-2 secretaries. When you don't have the aide or secretary it is much busier.

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Specializes in ICU, PACU, Cath Lab.

ICU. Ratio is mainly 2:1. If very critical 1:1. Rarely 3:1. We almost always get lunch...if we are getting killed the house sup will bring up box lunches we can eat while we chart. We have 18 beds. Techs..during the day we have some great techs...at night when I work...if they are there, they may as well not be.

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Specializes in LTC.

We have 79 Res in LTC facility I am the only nurse for the whole building. We have 16 in Alzheimer's unit , 19 medicare, It's pretty busy and I generally never get a lunch break. I may get 1 10 min break if I'm lucky.

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I work on a stepdown/pcu unit that is currently using 16 of 28 beds due to staffing. Our ratio is 4:1. Usually we have one secretary and one aide on day shift. Nights has a secretary until 11pm and every once in a while, they'll have an aide for part of the shift. On good days, we staff 5 nurses per shift. 4 nurses with patients and a floating charge nurse that is SUPPOSED to help out where it's needed. sometimes, to keep the hospital from going on diversion, we'll have 5:1 ratios and the charge nurse will also take a group of 2-3 patients. We still have one aide & one secretary when the census goes up.

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Specializes in Infection Preventionist/ Occ Health.

I usually have four patients on days. I work on a peds unit. We are assigned a nursing assistant with one of our patient. The other three have no help, which means that the nurse is responsible for everything from vitals to linen changes to dumping urine. These types of duties really eat into your time when you're running around trying to give blood, breathing treatments, calm a screaming child for a blood draw, etc.

If I get to eat lunch, it is a good day. If I get to sit down and actually enjoy my meal, you can be pretty certain that there are also pigs flying through the sky! Yesterday I crammed some food down my throat in about 6 minutes because one of my patients was very unstable (very bradycardic and hypertensive with very low platelets- not a good combination).

I love my job but I wish we had more (helpful) nursing assistants. Some are great but a few others hide out in the corner checking their e-mail all day... :( I try to show my appreciation for those who are ready and willing to help out.

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Hem/onc / med/surg / hospice / palliative care unit - I think we have 36 beds, but our usual census is 30.

Days - 5:1 with 2 charges w/o pts (managers - they help, but they do other things too), plus usually there is a "float" RN for 4 hours or so to help with misc. tasks. There is usually one secretary (sometimes 2) and 3 techs.

Eves - 5:1 with 1 charge, 1-2 secretaries, 3 techs.

Nights - 7-8:1 (charge has full load), no secretary, 2-3 techs.

The thing that gets me the most is that they could care less about acuity. The other day I had a chemo pt, one getting blood, a direct admit, a pleurex cath I had to drain, and they gave me another admission who needed bood. I got a little bit of help from the charge nurse, but not much. All they care about is that every nurse has 5 pts - budget budget budget! But hmmmm what about press-ganey press-ganey press-ganey??? Supposedly they are looking at staffing and ratios and are going to make some changes, and I really hope they do. It's amazing how much difference one pt can make! I don't mind doing 5 or even 6 if they are not having weird things going on, but once you toss blood and chemo into the mix, it gets rough!!! I know every floor has those "things" that cause problems!!!

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Specializes in NICU.

I work in a NICU. I have 1-2 patients at a time. We do total care, no techs.

When I worked as a floor nurse they tried to keep us at four, sometimes it would be 3-5 during the day. At night, they would often add 1, maybe 2 patients at 2300. The techs would usually have two nurse's worth of patients.

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Specializes in Pediatrics.

I work on a peds floor of a community hospital. We are to only have up to 4 pts, though they have given us 5 on occassion when we were understaffed. We sometimes have one PCT for the whole floor which is a 12 bed unit. We don't have a unit clerk, we enter all our own orders in the computer. We don't get a true lunch break. Most of us just get food and bring it back and eat at the desk. I work days and some days I don't have time to eat. We slow down a lot during the summer and then there is time to actually sit and take a break.

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Specializes in OR Hearts 10.

Wow, thanks everyone. I didn't realize we were taking care of so many more pts than other facilities when I was on the floor. But I was right out of nursing school so I didn't know any better. At lest it was a VERY organized unit.

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Specializes in Med/Surg.

I work med/surg: we are a very busy 28 bed unit we get postops like: ortho and any other postop imaginable (except gyn we dont usually get them), we have tele, and then your medical pts along with the psych pts and the substance abuses and overdoses eve peds pts if they have a hx of MRSA or VRE. its nothing for us to have 3 1:1 pts on the floor at one time. During the day we usually have 5-6pts each and the charge nurse takes none, we have 2-3 cnas and one secretary. On nights it depends on how many nurses there are. If there are 5 the charge takes 4 pts and the other nurses all take 6 and there is usually 2 cnas and a secretary.

I forgot we also are the chemo floor.

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