The Importance Of Charge Nurse In Nursing

My manager shift was spent observing Kaley McClure, the charge nurse on MICU at Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Hospital. I observed her leadership style and how she handled the tasks of a charge nurse, helping the nurses on the unit, and making it a team effort. I observed how she communicated with the staff on the unit, doctors, and family members visiting their family members. Kaley implemented the core functions of management while leading the unit which are planning, organizing, staffing, directing, and controlling. MICU is an intensive care unit which operates on to day to day basis of about 4 nurses with no more than two patients depending on the acuity of the patients. When the unit is understaff with not enough nurses, the

Kaley stated, “My expectations as charge nurse is to keep everyone happy and content, make sure each nurse is able to take care of their patients need and openly available to help each nurse working.” While observing with the charge nurse, Kaley would set up the room for a new admit, gather equipment the patient may need when they arrived, and call personnel that will be needed to assist in the care of the patient such as respiratory therapist for a client that will need to be intubated. The tasks of the charge nurse are make the assignment for the oncoming shift, communicate with the oncoming charge nurse to give a report on the clients on the unit, do the quality control on the Accu-check machines, assist other nurses with skills such as starting an IV or verifying medications, communicate with the house supervisor, check the crash cart, delegate tasks to the certified nursing assistants and nurse tech, and get a weekly report of the medications pulled from pyxis and who

The core functions that the charge nurse uses are organizing, and staffing. Directing, planning, and controlling falls under the duties of the manager. Organizing with a charge nurse role is utilized by prioritization of client care and task, time management, delegation to right personnel, team work, and communicating with the nurse on the unit. Staffing is assigning the oncoming shift of nurse based upon the acuity of the patient’s care. The type of communication that was use in my observation with the charge nurse was face to face and telephone communication. Face-to-face communication is oral communication that is rapid but may result in fewer people receiving the information than necessary (Marquis et al, 2015). The face to face communication used is notifying of new doctor orders, report on patient plan of care, and when assisting the nurse with tasks. Telephone communication is a telephone call is rapid and allows the receiver to clarify the message at the time it is given and accents may be difficult to understand as well in a multicultural workforce (Marquis et al, 2015). The charge nurse communicate with the doctors and house supervisor on the