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# If 17 patients on a ward need 4 hour individual care in any 24 hour period. How many nurses are required per 24 hours on a ward? Nurses shif

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If 17 patients on a ward need 4 hour individual care in any 24 hour period. How many nurses are required per 24 hours on a ward? Nurses shifts are 12 hour long

Oct 3, 2014

#1
+3453
+5

This is an interesting question.

It says that each patient needs individual care. So this means one nurse can't care for multiple patients.

Let's first find out how many patients a nurse can care for on their shift.

If they work for 12 hours, and each patient needs 4 hours of care, that they can care for 12/4, or 3 patients on their shift.

I'm thinking you can't have a nurse work back-to-back shifts and thus care for 6 patients in a 24 hour period. If you could do this you would get a different answer.

Anyway, if one nurse can care for 3 patients and there are 17 patients, that means that 17/3 tells us how many nurses we need.

$$\frac{17}{3} = 5\frac{2}{3}$$

Of course, you can't have a 2/3 ofa  nurse, so you would round up and need 6 nurses.

Oct 3, 2014

#1
+3453
+5

This is an interesting question.

It says that each patient needs individual care. So this means one nurse can't care for multiple patients.

Let's first find out how many patients a nurse can care for on their shift.

If they work for 12 hours, and each patient needs 4 hours of care, that they can care for 12/4, or 3 patients on their shift.

I'm thinking you can't have a nurse work back-to-back shifts and thus care for 6 patients in a 24 hour period. If you could do this you would get a different answer.

Anyway, if one nurse can care for 3 patients and there are 17 patients, that means that 17/3 tells us how many nurses we need.

$$\frac{17}{3} = 5\frac{2}{3}$$

Of course, you can't have a 2/3 ofa  nurse, so you would round up and need 6 nurses.