Nursing report sheet

Minutes left for everything you did not plan: 221
Minutes in the shift: 720
Minutes the planned work already takes: 355
Minutes on scheduled med passes: 120

Nothing in the sheet is a published average. Every figure it works with is one you time on your own floor, which is the point: a national number for how long a med pass takes cannot tell you whether tonight's assignment fits in tonight's shift.

Your numbers

Patients on your assignment The ones you take report on at the start, not the ones on the floor.Length of the shift, hours Scheduled med passes per patient Count the scheduled rounds only. PRNs land in the interruption share below.Minutes one med pass takes Pull, check, give, sign. Time it once on a normal shift rather than guessing.Scheduled assessments per patient Minutes one assessment takes Minutes you spend charting one patient Everything you type about that patient across the whole shift.Minutes you spend handing over one patient What you actually read off the sheet at the end, per patient.Admissions, transfers and discharges in the shift Minutes one admission or discharge takes Share of the shift lost to interruptions, percent Call bells, PRNs, a family at the desk, a provider on the phone. Twenty percent is a quiet floor.Break minutes you are entitled to

The figures below are a worked example from a five patient med-surg assignment on a twelve hour shift: 221. Change any of them for your own floor.

Download the Nursing report sheet worked example (CSV)

The Sbarvo workspace, Report sheets tab, showing a saved sheet titled 4W nights, five patient assignment, 12 September, filed against the patient in Room 412 and the shift Nights, 4W, 19:00 to 07:30, with all twelve inputs and fourteen outputs on screen: 5 patients, a 12 hour shift, 355 planned minutes, 144 minutes of interruptions and 221 minutes left for everything unplanned. — A saved report sheet in Sbarvo Pro. It is the same worked example as the page above, kept against the shift and the patients it belongs to, reopenable next shift from the link at the foot, and printable under the unit's own name. The figures are the ones these inputs produce, not a mock-up.

The nursing report sheet works out whether tonight's assignment fits in tonight's shift. You give it the patients you are taking, how long the shift is, your scheduled med passes and assessments and what each really takes, the minutes you spend charting and handing over per patient, the admissions and discharges you are expecting, and the share of the shift that disappears into call bells and phone calls. It returns the minutes left for everything you did not plan, the planned minutes each patient needs, how much of the shift you spend documenting rather than nursing, how many rows the sheet needs tonight, and the one figure nobody works out before accepting it: what one more patient would add.

Where the constants in this tool come from

AHRQ, Patient Safety and Quality: An Evidence-Based Handbook for Nurses, chapter 34, Handoffs: Implications for Nurses.

AHRQ PSNet patient safety primer: Handoffs and Signouts.

What nurses ask about the Nursing report sheet

Which figures do I need before using the nursing report sheet? Your own: how many patients you take, how long your shift is, how many scheduled med passes and assessments each patient has and roughly how long one really takes on your floor, the minutes you spend charting and handing over per patient, and how much of a shift goes to interruptions. Time one med pass and one assessment on a normal shift and the rest follows. Nothing comes from outside your own unit.

Why does it ask what share of the shift goes to interruptions? Because that share is the whole difference between an assignment that looks workable on paper and one that is not. Call bells, PRNs, a family at the desk and a provider on the phone are not exceptions to the shift, they are most of it, and a sheet that plans twelve hours of scheduled work into twelve hours of shift is planning a shift that has never happened. Twenty percent is a quiet floor.

Does the sheet go into the patient's chart? No, and it must not. This is the working sheet you carry, the one people call a brain: it holds what you need in front of you to get through the shift and to hand over properly at the end. The chart is your employer's record and it is kept in your employer's system. What you save here is yours.

Work your assignmentSee what a shift leaves you