[bconly]

Our hospital has been using a modified primary nursing model for the past 20 years. We are now going to try team nursing. I need lots of good comments about it to convince our nursing staff to give it a try. Any suggestions?
Thanks,
Betsy

[kipi]

Team nursing. I have worked in many places that team nurse including my current job. It does work really well but the essential element has to be a good, approachable team leader who can encourage and motivate the team as a whole. I have always found it easier to nurse as a team. In my jobs where team nursing has been practiced we have managed to

. write our own off duty to cover our team
. give better more consistent care to our patient for example getting to know there relatives, problems other than their medical ones
. we also managed to support each other more by agreeing on the way in which care will be delivered etc
. our unit at the moment is also implementing teaching so every team now has a month of teaching to do and each member does something be it a formal teaching session or journal/article review or discussing problems with particular patients

.ps the team composition is also important ie a good skill mix not all junior or senior nurses

We also managed to get weekly meetings with physios and social woerkers etc to discuss patients care discharge plans

The doctors only the juniors though actually turned up to give their point of view. it works really well but you have to be committed to giving it a go.

[Theresa]

Our hospital recently went to "team nursing" it took alot of convincing because we have alot of green nurses who have never used this model. The positive side of this is that the overtime has been decreased greatly on our unit, and the pressure is also greatly decreased. There are still some nurses who believe that primary nursing works better because you get to know "all" of your patient, but I feel team nursing is the best way to go these days when due to "the numbers" we arent able to have as many nurses per patient as we would like.
Good luck!!!!!!!

[DxieLdy001]

Please describe how modified team nursing works.

Thanks!