NursingLink

The med surg nurses on the unit where I teach typically have 6-8 patients.

But the number of patient's "assigned" is a misleading number that doesn't take into account admissions and discharges.

You yourself note, Mrbrown, that you have up to 12 patients in a shift.

This is a part of why management cannot understand nurses complaints about staffing.  They ignore the sheer voluem of work that goes into a discharge or an admission, and the fact nurses are really caring for more people than the beds they are actually assigned to.

One of the ERs where I worked dealt with this problem by adjusting staffing based on the busiest hours of the day:  as the day went on staffing went up.  Early in the morning hours, staffing decreased as the ER cleared out.  It worked.

The first place I worked in Florida was the PITS.  On night shift I had on average 20 patients (med/surg unit).  On day shift, I had between 9-12 patients.  We had usually 1 CNA or an LPN who was working as a CNA.  Errors were more of the norm, than the exception.  This was a med/surg unit.  We had GSW's, Post-ops, urology pts, medical patients, and even Gyne pts.  It was insane.  This was a well known hospital.  I'm much happier where I'm at now, 5 patients and usually have a CNA.

When i worked as an LPN at a hospital on the medserg unit my average was between 14 and 19 patients on a good night and a Lazy RN working with me, and on a bad night it was 22-26 pts. Now that i work at a Nursing home i have usually between 24 and 27 pts when we are fully staffed and 36+ when we work short.

Ok i take that back about the 36. My nursing home's censes is at a all time low at the moment so they have 2 nurses covering 2 halls a peice at the main circle so that makes it between 48-54 pts each.

40 patients! By yourself? My first RN job in 1980 I had 22 surgery patients a shift. It was usually 4 or 5 pre-ops for the next day, 5 to 7 post-ops (some were admitted the morning of their surgery), a few OB surgery patients and things like car wreck or ortho patients from the ski area up the road. I had 1 LPN or an LPN and maybe a CNA. Maybe. LPNs could not do anything with IVs then.

Then they fired the ER nurse at the beginning of the shift one night, handed me the keys to everything and made me do that too! It was a bad snow year and we commonly saw 20 to 35 patients in the ER between 3PM and 12AM. And when the regular supervisor was off I was then the hospital supervisor as well. And when push turned to shove in OB, guess what? Luckily I had been an ER tech for 2 years while going to nursing school and an EMT-A before that.

I was also the pharmacist after 5PM, we had the whole hospital switchboard after 5:30 and the keys to the cafeteria (such as it was) to get food for after hours admissions and Central Supply.

I was a new nurse and dumb as a stump about a lot of stuff. You learn quick or lose your license and a patient may lose more than that. I hated that job.

Its hard to believe but its happening here in the PI most especially in government hospitals, you give the meds, you attend to all the needs of the patients, from taking their vital signs to emptying their urine bag, doing charting, admitting patients etc, etc.  Yeah, we have no choice, we could only have a breather when there are student nurses assigned in our ward, that's the only time we could loosen a little bit of our loads. I worked in the  OB ward and most of our patients come from indigent families.