Do you cut corners in your daily nursing practice?

Nurses are overworked and some will cut corners to manage all their day to day activities. Are the corners that get cut saving time or are they costing the patients dearly? Do we know when we are cutting corners in our practice or has it become a habit or routine that we no longer acknowledge it? Nurses General Nursing Article

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mindlor

1,341 Posts

First to the OP....I am 99.99 percent certain that corners are being cut in your facility....you just dont know it.

Myself? I cut corners each and every shift. I have to. No on has died yet, thank God..

At a staff meeting I put it out there that the infection control nurse and the wound care nurse should be required to each work one week on the floor next month. The idea was met with disdain......but clearly these people have lost touch with reality.

Our nurse educator herself, she told me, listen, nurses know that each shift they may have 100 things to get done. They are only going to do 70 or 80. The art of nursing is knowing which 70 or 80 to do.

Now sadly, our charting system forces us to chart on all 100 things. But, that is another thread....yes?

MsBruiser

558 Posts

Yep lots of meetings which drive me crazy, but a lot of protocols and procedures which are in place in the recent few years are actually mandated by the government or medicare.

Medicare want to cut payments to health care facilities, by improving care and reducing hospital re-admissions. So they have tightened the rules and if a hospital wants to survive financially then they have no choice but to tighten the care they are providing.

Unfortunately for you and me this all comes down to how we manage our care, reducing infections and decreasing hospital re-admission rates for which we are penalized.

Now you might say we cannot meet these strict requirements and we have to cut corners, but if your floor has repeated re-admissions for hospital acquired infections or an increase in UTI's from catheters then you are going see somebody somewhere coming down like a ton of bricks and investigations will be underway.

At the end of the day I dont know about you but I actually need my job, I work so hard with my staff to focus on what we can do to improve care and reduce infections. Please dont assume that all managers are the same, there are some out there who really care and work hard.

I came to nursing as a second career, and I notice something that many RN(s) don't - nurses have an unerring ability to make their lives difficult. Many times what they perceive as a "mandate" can be solved with a small checkbox - but they will create a multitude of needless forms and paperwork. When attempting to streamline said paperwork, management will throw up their hands and say, "The Joint Commission told us to do it!"

Furthermore, if today's focus is UTI(s) and other preventable readmissions, something will have to give. And it will give...

RN819

23 Posts

This is the hardest thing!! In nursing school, we are taught the "Gold Standard of Nursing". After 7 months on a telemetry floor with a patient ratio of 5 or 6 to 1 nurse, I learned that there is no way we can do everything the way we learned in school. I fee like I am giving suboptimal care if I cut corners or otherwise not give my best to my patients. I cannot cut corners and sleep at night. I do a thorough assessment on my patients, because I WILL NOT false chart. I was the slowest nurse on the floor, and it makes me look bad! As a somewhat new nurse, how an I keep my job, maintain my integrity and give patients the care they deserve???