Nursing Staff

When you join the nursing staff of a hospital, you become a member of a health care team. You will always be able to call on others for assistance, but you are now going to be in charge of a health care team of your own.  As a nursing staff member you are expected to be a leader and you are given a group of patients to care for and to be responsible for.  Each area and floor of the hospital has a nursing staff that is assigned to that individual area, although you may sometimes be asked to go to another area to help out when they are short of help.

You may be doing total patient care, which means that you will be doing all of the care of each of your patients, including baths, meals and medications. Usually you will have nursing assistants to share some of the bathing and meal duties with you. You are the nursing staff member who must see to it that all of the care for every patient on your team is done correctly.

As part of the nursing staff you will be assigned care plans to fill out for your patients, these are guides written to establish that the correct nursing processes are being followed.

You will also chart on all of your patients and every institution has their own particular way of charting.  These charting methods are not difficult and much of it is now done by using computers.

The nursing staff is a dynamic and integral part of any institutional setting and you will quickly find yourself a welcome and valued member of the team.  You will be working with a group of health care givers who are all committed to providing the best care to all patients and there is a great feeling of camaraderie within this group.