two many patients to little nurses?

[shadowrunner]

I am a nursing student who will be graduateing in December, I just finished doing my preceptorship. I am concerned about the nurse to patient ratio that I have seen in the hospitals, does anyone else feel there are to many patients to one nurse? And do you feel like this is compromising the quality of the care the patients are receiving?

[TheCommuter, BSN, RN]

High nurse/patient ratios can definitely compromise the quality of care being received.

I work 12-hour night shifts at a small, freestanding rehab hospital. When I have 8 or fewer patients, I can provide decent care and keep everyone happy without feeling flustered and stressed. I am overwhelmed and pressured when I have 10 or 11 patients.

[Hubby's girl]

yes it can. It's about money, usually everything is.

[BellaDestiny]

DEFINATELY compromises! Sub-acute unit at a LTC facility... usually around 22 patients are on my load. Very stressed...would be grateful for any ideas on how to manage anything and everything better with this!

[wee_oneRN]

I live in California where the nursing ratio's aren't too bad. It is a deciding factor on whether or not I would move to another state or travel nurse elsewhere!

By the way, your title uses the word "too" incorrectly twice. At first, I thought it was a pun, lol.

[classicdame, MSN, EdD]

Our facility is acutely aware of this issue. We staff 1:5 in M/S, 1:2 in ICU and the rest are no more than 1:4, except OR, PACU and CV-ICU of course

[cdktRN]

Look around at different facilities before you anchor yourself to one that might prove too stressful for a new grad. I have worked at hospitals where we had 1:9 on day shift (med-surg/tele) and 1:12 on night shift. As people are aging and the degree of illness increases, the acuity of these patients lends to nurse burnout. I now work at a facility where we have a 1:4 ratio on med-surg/tele on day and 1:5 on night shift. There is a tremendous difference in patient care and a decrease in nurse burnout. Good luck and make sure that you talk to the nurses at a variety of places before you decide where to land for a while.

[LPNET]

@ classicdame those ratios sounds great, what state do you work in?

[hayley8299]

I have recently was employed at Nursing Home Rehab Facility, my experience their was not very pleasant. I have been a LPN for 27yrs and as the years go on find that you can not do the job the way you were able to in times past. Patient care and safety was a priority and this is no longer. There medication system was electronic and the meds were all pre packaged in one pack for that time period. You need to scan the bar codes and if a med was discontinued it is still in there because it is all prepacked. And you could only pull up the time that is current. Would not let you see what was coming. So this computer system had total control of your time. Treatments were scheduled for 1am for skin preps and bladder scans, then you had pyschosocial sheets to fill out and PRN were in another screen. You were not seeing a MAR or TAR just the meds for that time. New to this system and years of being very organized and looking ahead to have a game plan this was very stressful. You only have one hr before and after to get meds done which most times is possible unless you run into situations, this was a mispour and you were out of compliance. Even though full time on a Skilled Rehab floor never had the same assignment 2 days in a row. So you could never be prepared or know what the treatments were so you are not waking people up in the middle of the night to do a bladder scan at 1am. Made no sense to me. This is there way of controling and managing your time. You have to be organized anyway in this job, but now the computer was doing this. To pull up the MAR or TAR had to go out to go into another area. You could not see what the previous shift did or didn't do. Then the assignment would change at 11pm because you had less staff so then you got 7-8 more patients that you don't know. Accu chek heaven 15 of them on one assignment. Chart on all of them. Admissions coming at 7pm when that was shift change and they would not even write the admission note so when you were ready to start you were running behind from the get go and playing catch up all night and worrying about this computer. Then instead of sending meds back to pharmacy when discharged they just destroy them because they were all prepacked for time slot. What a waste of Medicare money. You can not do your job as a nurse. Maybe I am old fashioned but this is socialized medicine already and the pay checks were nothing like I ever seen before. No pay stub was given you either have to have direct deposit or they put it on a debit card issued by them. Only way to see your pay was to log onto there system and you see total hrs, gross and net pay and the taxes were not itemized just saw a gross tax amount. Did not like this at all. To much control for me. Out of there. Feel less stressed now even though I do not have a job.

[annlewis]

DEFINATELY compromises! Sub-acute unit at a LTC facility... usually around 22 patients are on my load. Very stressed...would be grateful for any ideas on how to manage anything and everything better with this!

I am a new LPN at LTC, what is a sub-acute unit in LTC? we have a rehab unit, and understand that, could you tell me alittle about your unit and your duties???