I’m a new grad 5months in working cardiac PCU in Rochester. Our ratio was supposed to be 1:3, but for the past 3months it’s consistently 1:5 on days and sometimes worse on nights as 6 nurses left a month after i joined. Each patient can have 16-20 morning meds alone, not including afternoon meds, end-of-shift meds, and everything scattered in between. Plus all that comes with the patient: tubes, drains, foleys w/ strict I/O, insulin, drips, some LVAD, pacemakers etc. We the nurses do everything literally including our fingersticks. After report, there’s barely time to sit, drink water, or even use the bathroom. I’m running up and down the entire shift, and honestly even the experienced nurses are doing the same. After every shift, I feel like I just came back from battle or took a physical beating and I used to do MMA, so I know what getting beat up feels like lol. I worked yesterday, slept 12 hours straight, and my whole body still hurts as i am writing this. Yesterday I opened Epic, saw everything I had to do, and I was extremely close to saying, “F this, I quit.” I’ve been thinking about transitioning to psych, but part of me feels like I’d be admitting defeat by leaving PCU this early. For the experienced nurses: would you stick it out, look for a different unit/hospital, or just move to psych?   submitted by   /u/Far_Lab5748 [link]   [comments]