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nursing homes nurses are horribly overwhelmed. This is a symptom of a bad system as much as it is a bad nurse. I have worked on a floor that what would be considered a nursing home. I had 11 patients and got an admission that made 12. The admission took about 2.5 hours to complete. That left me with 9.5 hours to take care of 12 patients. That leaves me with 47.5 minutes per patient. Charting on each patient takes approximately 17 minutes each. That leaves 30 minutes per patient. Each patient gets a physical assessment. A thorough physical assessment takes about 10 minutes. That leaves 7 minutes left per patient or 84 minutes total. So, you now have 1 hour and 24 minutes minutes to safely pass medications to 12 people. That may or may not be enough time depending on the meds and the patients. Notice I haven’t mentioned a lunch, a break, going to the bathroom, or doing any kind of dressing changes, or helping people go to the bathroom, or extenuating circumstances that require calling physicians and taking orders, drawing blood, starting IVs, cleaning up poop and pee, walking up and down the halls checking patients, turning patients every two hours, obtaining vital signs, writing/taping report for the oncoming shift, talking to the patients and/or their families, etc. I have worked on other floors where I had 5 patients that were so complicated that they took even more time to deal with incidentally. Nurses are being asked to do too much. This is the healthcare system you got. Firing more nurses won’t fix it, it will more likely collapse it. I think I should have been a plumber. I would be paid more, worked less, and held to a lesser standard. Plumbers don’t go to jail when they eff up your sink installation. Nursing sucks.

Thank you, Nurse, for posting. We need to get back to family care for our elderly. However, the problem today is that the “Sandwich Generation” is already having to rear the Grandkids because the Mom’s are single, divorced, or just stressed because both parents work and it is killing some who are already elderly themselves. How would they take care of Grandma and the Grandkids, too?

When I worked in a nursing home as a nursing assistant, our unit had 42 patients. Sometimes there was only one nurse for those 42 patients. The unit was assigned 3 assistants. I usually had 13 patients to care for; however, if an assistant called in sick or on vacation, the 2 left over would have 21 patients each to feed, clean up after incontinent spells, get dressed for bed, get into bed, do q 2 hour rounds, answer call bells, etc., etc.

The lone nurse had meds to pass out for 42 patients, charting and all that you mentioned in your post. Most had to stay overtime to get their paperwork finished.

It's a 90 mile an hour job.