Dear Hospital Administration...

[aboucherrn]

Which do you prefer...

1. High patient satisfaction scores OR semi-private rooms?

2. Staff clocking out on time OR bedside report?

3. Quiet at night initiative OR filling the unit with admissions all night long?

Because when you change "OR" to "AND", it doesn't work. You can't have it all. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Night Shift Floor Nurse Who Works Her Butt Off But It Never Seems Good Enough.

[teleRN08]

love this!!!! so true!!!!:w00t:

[JBudd, MSN]

I worked in a hospital with 4 bed ward rooms, and the bathroom (one) was down the hall. So much for accurate I/Os! Lots of BSCs. In my brand new expanded and state of the art (that's a laugh) ED, we have one bathroom for each zone, of 12 beds each.

[turnforthenurse, MSN, NP]

Amen! One of the floors I used to work on had 3 semi-private rooms, otherwise all of the other rooms were private. Another floor was all semi-private with only a few privates for those that needed to be in isolation. I agree that patients may enjoy the company of others as a PP has said but I still think rooms should be private. You avoid HIPPA violations that way. The floor I work on now has all private rooms along with two rooms that have negative pressure in case we have someone who needs to be on airborne precautions. Some of the rooms are closer together and I have had patients ask me, "oh is so&so still next door? I overheard the doctors and the nurses talking about _____," etc.

Our hospital has been trying to implement bedside report for awhile but no one ever complies so management just tried to stop implementing it...report takes place at the nursing station. We will sometimes take things to the bedside, such as to verify a med dose on a dopamine gtt or to look at a dressing, but otherwise it's at the nurses station. We have found that doing an entire report at the bedside takes more time and people are clocking out late.

As far as admissions at night, sometimes that can't be helped. What irks me, though, is when we are transferring people in the middle of the night. It's different if a med-surg patient needs to come to progressive care or ICU or something, but transferring "just because" is really annoying. We had a patient who was on our floor for a few weeks with terminal cancer and yes, there really was no need for that patient to be on a cardiac floor but they made us transfer this patient to med-surg at 0300 to have a bed "just in case!!!!" Patients are then unhappy because of this and in turn the family members are unhappy, too. If someone needs to be transferred (unless it's an emergency), it really should be done at the beginning of the shift (or at least before 0000) or at the end, preferably before dayshift to help them out a bit.