"Ideal" Procedure vs Practical Procedure

Ok, this is for the people in the LTC crowd but I have a question for you. Soon I will be set out into the floors myself with no preceptor or anything and I was wondering how do you handle 30-40 some odd patients?

I work the 11-7 shift .I have 12AM's some 4AMs, and a whole lotta 6'ers. To make things harder I usually have 3-4 G tubes on the floors so I have to crush meds and flush with all that fun stuff. Not to mention fingersticks, whole lotta fingersticks. One floor I worked on had 14 of them due at 6-6:30.

Ideally you are supposed to give meds an hour before or hour after but practically is this even feasible? My preceptors told me to start at 4AM just to keep track. Do I risk getting written up for following such practices? The place I work at punishes incidental overtime so I don't want to be the nurse that works three hours over their shift just because of a med pass.