Staffing: What's your method?

[UM Review RN, ASN, RN]

For those of you who have to staff your unit's next shift, do you do it by yourself or is there such a thing as a computer program to do it for you?

Seems like it could get complicated on a big, busy unit.

Comments are welcome.

[VivaLasViejas, ASN, RN]

We all take turns doing staffing for the next shift, which sometimes gets complicated even on our small (38-bed) med/surg floor. I think most of us try hard to be fair and to consider continuity of care when making out assignments; we also avoid assigning LPNs to patients with central lines and multiple drips, and there's always this one ditzy on-call nurse who we know cannot handle a normal patient load, let alone admissions, so we have to cut her some slack.

Whenever I do staffing, I try to arrange things so the nurse who had a particular team the night before gets their same group. It's usually good for both nurse and patient, although a particularly demanding or heavy team can push a nurse to the limits of their endurance by the third night in a row, and switching them to a different group makes for good will when it's their turn to do MY assignment.

[DutchgirlRN, ASN, RN]

We have 42 beds. The charge nurse makes out the assignment for the next shift. First I check to see who worked the night before so I can give them back their same patients and then I go from there. If I know a patient is getting alot of IVP meds or has an epidural I'll make sure they get assigned to an RN. Other than that there would be no difference as to who gets the patient.