Many nursing duties delayed or skipped

Many of the nation's nurses are spread too thin, assigned too many patients. Here are some of the tasks nurses say regularly get skipped or delayed:

• Providing medicines within one hour of the correct time.

• Helping weak or disabled patients go to the restroom and promptly cleaning those who soil themselves.

• Making sure patients have adequate pain relief.

• Doing thorough evaluations and follow-up checks on all patients, especially listening to critical lung and heart sounds.

• Helping patients who require feeding when no aides are available.

• Checking intravenous lines for leaks or skin damage.

• Giving baths and other hygiene care.

• Comforting distraught, lonely patients.

• Teaching patients and their family how to deal with an illness when they go home.

• Helping hospital staff plan follow-up treatment or home care.

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Sources: AP interviews, AFT Healthcare union survey of nurses.

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