What is your nurse-patient ratio?

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I'm a new grad RN about to start on a med-surg floor. I was told that on days I will have 4-5 patients and on nights 7-8. Does this sound normal/manageable?

Specializes in ICU, Med-Surg.

days 1:6 with an aide

nights 1:6 with an aide (1:4 if no aide) and a secretary who covers the whole hospital

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We have 8 -10 patients and are supposed to work as a team with 1 RN, 1 LPN, and 1 PCT but most of the time we are missing either a LPN or PCT so it's usually two of us trying to manage our own job and part of someone else's.

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Specializes in Medical/Surgical, Ambulatory Care.

1:6 max MedSurg/Tele Unit. We have aides only. Our CNA ratios are 1:9 max, I believe.

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med/onc 32 private rooms, days 4-6 with 3 pcas & nights 8-10 with 2 pcas

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Specializes in Med/Surg, Tele, Dialysis, Hospice.

1:5-6 on twelve hour night shifts, but...we are constantly getting admissions and the admission process at our facility is riduculously lengthy. If I get one admission, just getting them settled in, going through the admission questions (19 pages!!!), and trying to get a hold of their doctor in the middle of the night to reconcile their home meds and get new orders will take well over an hour to two hours. But...I never get just one admission, it's always at least two, along with my other patients. Our med room is at the nurses' station, which is in the middle of a long hallway. We almost always get patients at extreme opposite ends of the hallway, and since the med room with all of their meds, IV bags, etc. and the supply room are at the nurses' station, it's run, run, run, all night long. By the end of my shift I feel broken down and worn out. Oh, did I mention that our aide almost always gets pulled to a different floor or is forced to sit with a one on one patient, meaning that the nurses are doing her work too?

I am done. I have about eight applications out, I am starting to get calls for interviews, and just as soon as I get hired elsewhere after making VERY SURE that I won't be jumping from the frying pan into the fire, I will be done with Med/Surg nursing forever.

WOO-HOO!!!!:yeah:

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Specializes in Emergency Department, Float Pool.

I work as a float in CA

Medsurg non tele 1:5 rarely will have aides

Tele 1:4 rarely have aides

Postpartum can have up to 4 couplets ( mom and baby) no aide ever

ICU 2:1 no aides

ER 1:6 aides

Med surg/tele is the most difficult units but ICU can be stressful as well

ER is a nice fast to slow pace

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I'm on a Med/Surg telemetry unit in Kosciousko County, IN. We average 1:4-5 on days and 1:5-7 (usually 6 it seems) on nights.

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Specializes in NICU.

I work on a medical with tele floor. We use team nursig: R and LPN and 1-2 aide on the floor. At night the LPN and I share anywhere between 8-12 pts ( although we had 13 recently).

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I work on a Med-Surg floor. Remember that you do not get just your set of patients and that is it for the rest of the shift. On our floor it is 5-6 pts per RN. However, there are days when I discharge 3-4 pts and then get another 3-4 pts from PACU. Making a total of 9 patients for that shift. That means doing admissions for all the new patients and "neglecting" the original 1-2 that are still there. Also you should not just go by the ratio or census for that day. After discharging 2 of my patients, the other 3 were so needy that I was hopping for the rest of the night. One I even had to call a Rapid Response. So always go by the acuity of the pt.

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I work on a Med-Surg floor. Remember that you do not get just your set of patients and that is it for the rest of the shift. On our floor it is 5-6 pts per RN. However, there are days when I discharge 3-4 pts and then get another 3-4 pts from PACU. Making a total of 9 patients for that shift. That means doing admissions for all the new patients and "neglecting" the original 1-2 that are still there. Also you should not just go by the ratio or census for that day. After discharging 2 of my patients, the other 3 were so needy that I was hopping for the rest of the night. One I even had to call a Rapid Response. So always go by the acuity of the pt. Also you can not always rely on your aides. Some are wonderful and others are useless. There are always the bad apples in the bunch. I asked aides a number of times to bladder scan a pt at a certain time and when I find out that it wasn't done, there excuse is always "I forgot". So don't rely on having "help".

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I work on a medical/surgical floor, and the hospital has no step down/progressive unit (that is us too). We have 38 beds, and 5-6 patients per RN on days and nights (because it is just as busy on nights on my floor!). But, on days they have 3-4 CNA's (due to baths/feeding), and at nights we have 2 if we are fully staffed. Depending on the charge nurse, they will take 2-3 patients, and the team lead takes 4. We are also a monitored unit (telemetry). We usually get at least 1 admission a night, but usually 2. We stay full :nurse:

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Med-Surg-Tele here.....days, 5-6; nights, 6-7. Five is perfect. Six is usual. Seven is rare.....somehow...the nurse "who can manage well"...always gets that 7th patient (working nights)...why, why, why is it often ME??? I feel that our acuities are so high it can get unsafe beyond 6 at night. And days ought to never have more than five. That is why I am trying my dangdest to get a postition with a magnet hospital....they give 1:5 tops. And that is why they are safer to work in. It's a lot easier to find a new job than a new license.

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