Provided with a phone for shift?

[Graduatenurse14]

I will start a job next week for a large, urban teaching hospital on a unit where only some of the nurses are provided with a phone ( ex. Spectralink.) If you have a doc calling you back you have sit next to a landline phone. That is shocking to me!!

I worked as an aide for their competition which is another large, urban teaching hospital where all nurses and aides had a Spectralink phones to communicate with each other. The nurse phones had an outside line so they could continue to do things while waiting for a doctor, SNF, etc. to call back.

I can't imagine how much time is wasted by everyone not being provided with a phone for their shift.

If anyone is phoneless, tell me how that works. I'm already worried about time management issues and now I find this out!!

Thanks!!

[Graduatenurse14]

If this technology is used, it is important to make sure that staff make a special effort to ensure that their patients have an accurate picture of what is going on.

At the hospital I worked where everyone had phones, there were signs all over the place letting patients and families know that they were being used for work purposes.

[calivianya, BSN, RN]

I hate carrying phones!!! I can't use enough exclamation points in that. We all have them at my current job.

At my last one, we just had locators and the ability to page a person inside of a room. It was pretty simple - if we had a call, the secretary would page the room I was standing in, which was visible on the computer screen at the secretary's desk, and tell me I had a phone call. At least I wouldn't lose the call that way because the secretary could put the caller on hold. Now, if I'm elbows deep in poop and can't answer the phone on my hip within four rings, the caller just keeps getting bounced around, re-transferred, etc. I feel like it's a lot more aggravating to a physician calling me back, for example, to have to talk to the secretary three times to get the call re-transferred back to my phone than it would be just to wait on hold for a few minutes at my station.

[Graduatenurse14]

@calivianya,

Your response made me chuckle! When I was a nursing assistant I've been elbows deep in poop and the dang phone kept ringing! Also, 4 rings are not that many before it's bounced somewhere else, IMO!

We do have the system where we wear a tag and it lights up outside the room and I think shows on the computer where we are so we can be found. One if the unit secretaries pages us in the room to let us know that we have a call or that another patient has rung out. Some RNs don't like that but I'm ok with it. Patients know they aren't our only one (Hopefully, anyway!)

[VANurse2010]

@calivianya,

Your response made me chuckle! When I was a nursing assistant I've been elbows deep in poop and the dang phone kept ringing! Also, 4 rings are not that many before it's bounced somewhere else, IMO!

We do have the system where we wear a tag and it lights up outside the room and I think shows on the computer where we are so we can be found. One if the unit secretaries pages us in the room to let us know that we have a call or that another patient has rung out. Some RNs don't like that but I'm ok with it. Patients know they aren't our only one (Hopefully, anyway!)

Frankly, I would never work in such an environment where my movements were tracked and I was expected to be available every second of a shift via phone. It's been heaven in my current job with no Vocera and only regular phones.

[calivianya, BSN, RN]

Frankly, I would never work in such an environment where my movements were tracked and I was expected to be available every second of a shift via phone. It's been heaven in my current job with no Vocera and only regular phones.

Being tracked comes in pretty handy when you have a patient complaining, "I didn't see my nurse all day, I want to file a complaint about her," and then the log shows that you were in the room at least three times an hour for five or more minutes at a time. Just saying. Being tracked isn't all bad.