What are your responsibilities?

JKL33 · Feb 26, 2018

I'm in my second semester of nursing school. And all we have really learned so far.. when it comes to patient care.. is how to do the things I've mentioned that I do as a Tech, and things like trach care, wound care, medication, charting, and admitting/assessing a patient.
The nurses on my unit have a total of 3-5 patients on average. And I'm honestly very curious what your typical day looks like as a nurse that has a cna/tech/assistant on your floor.
It seems like a lot of the nurses on my floor have a lot of downtime.
I'm assuming this definitely depends on what type of unit you work on or where you work so just wanted to get a better idea of what to expect.
What does your day to day look like? If you were a tech before becoming a nurse, what was something you didnt expect that happened after becoming a nurse? Did you think being a tech was more challenging?
Thanks!

Without a doubt you have a tough job and an essential role - and any good RN is grateful for your excellent care of patients!

I have been a nursing assistant and my experience, with all sincerity, is that it was very challenging in many regards but overall doesn't compare to the weight of the way I personally feel about challenges that are inherent with increased (legal) responsibility. For me, that is where the main difference lies. Everything a tech does is technically delegated by someone with a license and scope of practice which allows them to delegate that task. When you gain your RN license, you will be the one delegating those tasks, for which you are ultimately responsible.

...medication, charting, and admitting/assessing a patient

These are no small matters. Correctly assessing and monitoring patients, administering medications, and documenting the patient's status and our interventions are some of the biggest, most core things that nurses do. Even assessing and monitoring a patient is something that requires a solid knowledge base and a lot of experience.

If your nurses have a lot of downtime (as opposed to time spent documenting, which may look like downtime, but isn't) and aren't helping with patient care tasks, that is wrong. I don't operate that way.

I know there are people who shirk their responsibilities or don't do a thorough job at them, but in my recent experiences there is no way that, as an RN (or a tech) you will have any downtime to speak of in acute care IF you are being thorough and aiming for excellent work.

In the ED it is constant busy-ness. The nursing process on rapid cycle all day long.

direw0lf, BSN · Feb 26, 2018

My PCA responsibilities are VS's q4 hours, blood sugars, blood draws, ADL's, charting I&Os, rounding, set up rooms, pretty much like you! My days are 12 hours but to be perdiem i'm only required to work 3 days a month. Sometimes I have to act as a patient observer. The nurses have 6 patients, and will get discharges/admissions. These are bariatric surgery/orthopedic unit and my other is tele unit. If I float somewhere else nurse to pt ratio changes like ICU, I rarely float elsewhere though unless it's to be an observer. Nurses and pca's can't be floated without having an orientation to that unit first.

So I'm still a student but I thought I'd answer this anyway because mainly I'm home sick right now haha. In nursing school, it's a lot of the same minus blood draws and glucometer! But the most important part imo for you to get out of your first semesters of clinical is ASSESSMENT! Do a complete head to toe assessment on every patient you can. Practice your focused assessments. Really pay attn to the assessments and honing in on your time management for them, and being able to tell sick vs healthy, know what adventitious lung sounds are! I wish I concentrated more on all that in my first semesters. I did my head to toes but what I really wanted was to focus on medication administration haha which is important too of course. Now I'm in my preceptorship in the pediatric emergency department and I will have a few days in the main emergency department also. I'm assessing, charting, calculating and administering meds, hanging IV bags/priming/setting/running them. What I can't do as a student still are blood draws/glucometer, IV push meds, and insert IV's. Really important to know your focused assessments very well in the ED, it's teaching me a lot. I don't have that patient bonding experience so much though as I do on the floors. The PCA's in the ped and main EDs will do ECG's and vitals, and clean rooms. Nurses do the blood draws.

When you see nurses having a lot of downtime, it might be because on the floors they have a lot of charting to do and are sitting at the computers with that. I was a nurse intern (I did everything the nurse could do under supervision) and admission assessments especially are long sometimes. So while I'm a PCA I'm on my feet constantly, as an intern I was not as much as I do as a PCA but it was still working. In the ED, I'm definitely on my feet as much as any PCA tho!

Enjoy your journey!!!