Charge Nurse Duties

Nursing is considered as one of the most caring professions. Nurses specialize in providing holistic or over-all care to patients, and this duty involves maintaining a high-level of patient care. Nurses take full responsibility of caring for their patients, but that is not all there is to it.

Nurses are also rigorously trained to specialize in various nursing responsibilities, one of which is being a charge nurse. A charge nurse has undergone specialized training and is well-experienced in showing leadership and management skills. Providing administrative support and giving patient care are among the main job requirements.

Charge nurse duties also include directing admission, discharging patients and assigning nurses as support staff to patients. They are very flexible and can work in different shifts even if it will require them to work 8-10 hours a day. They can also provide guidance on administering care to new patients or to those who have special needs.

Most of the time they work closely with other nurses to create or develop a new plan of approach or an easy way to help the individual needs of their patients. They can also implement training and organize seminars to educate or train new staff or nurses to better serve the people that need nursing assistance.

Charge nurseThey are also called shift supervisors since they are in charge of documenting the performance or evaluation of their fellow nurses. They conduct council meetings for unsatisfactory performance that way they could help staff nurses improve their performance or they could train them to be more efficient to the tasks assigned to them.

It is also part of their responsibility to create the working schedule of the nurses, as well as maintaining adequate supplies and informing the staff of the changes that are made in the protocol. They also create the plan for the budget of the nursing staff and may provide clerical assistance to the hospital staff. While most of the duties of the charge nurse are managerial tasks, they can also provide excellent patient care.

Even if these requirements mainly consist of being in the management team, they are still efficient in assisting patients when it comes to their needs. They can assess and monitor patients in terms of their vital signs, conferring with the doctor with their progress and reporting special circumstances, whenever the situation calls for it.

A charge nurse is specially trained to become an efficient and effective team leader who provides support and assistance to nursing staff, while still providing holistic patient care to those who need it, and this is definitely a career which is truly inspiring.