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

Do you cut corners in your daily nursing practice? Or do you do everything according to the 'book'.

Do you police yourself in your everyday care of a patient, what do I mean by police yourself? I mean always follow the correct procedures no matter how busy you are, and when tempted to deviate never vary because you know it is wrong and that errors do often occur.

When you are in a patient room alone, by this I mean no other staff member watching you or a patient who is oblivious. Do you behave as though you were being scrutinized?

Do you manage that patient care the right way, because it is the correct way.

Do you manage your hygiene, the correct procedure for changing IV fluids, remaining clean/sterile when changing dressings?

Do you always wear gloves, do you change your gloves between procedures, do you wash your hands.

Or do you occasionally forget to wash hands, not follow guidelines for procedures. Cut corners because you think nobody is looking, even though you know it is wrong but do it anyway?

Do you reflect on your care after every shift? Reflection is old fashioned now, but after every event I do reflect on how I managed that situation, and if I could have done it better.

Often a corner is cut, nothing bad occurs so the next time you give yourself permission to do it again because you tried it once and it was OK. Soon the corner cutting becomes a habit and you no longer remember that you are cutting corners because it is part of your daily practice.

The reason I ask you, is because there are professional health care staff who do cut corners on a regular basis.

We do see frequent mistakes made because we don't take our time.

Medications mistakes being common

So many are made, but I wonder how many are actually happening and caught, and how many are never caught?

How many of you will go into a room, ask the patient her name, check her name band and then ask what she is allergic to? Every time you give that same patient her medication.

Do you tell the patient what medications she is receiving? Do you discuss the side effects or check if the patient actually understands what meds she is receiving and why?

Do you watch every patient take the meds you gave them? Or do you give them the pot and walk away?

Remember when you sign the MAR you are saying the 5 R's are correct, but you are also saying you saw the patient take the meds you gave her?

How many times have you been into a room and seen a pot of medication sitting on the side!

Do you always do a head to toe check, or do you skip some parts of it?

You know that these things I mention occur on a daily basis and often go unchecked until a major disaster occurs.

Often causing patients an injury, we have an obligation to provide each patient with high quality care always.

Ask yourself when you are tempted to cut a corner, would you approve or condone this if it was your relative or meaningful other?

When a mistake happens, it is often something that could have been avoided but it is something which will live with you for a very long time.

I am not your judge, I am not your conscience and I am only playing devil advocate.

Please please please do not cut corners because in the long run you may have cost somebody a lot more time, than you spared.

What a bunch of buzzards! Squack, squack, squack.

Good job OP for making everybody think! Granted I think you might be one of those nurses that's just a little too by the book, but I'd rather have one like you than one that's a little too by the break room.

The great thing about being a nurse - we are critical thinkers (not robots). We have the ability to say, "I know how it should be done according to the book, yet I also can assess that for this particular patient at this particular time, it is not necessary." If one thinks I'm going to make the patient say their birthday every time I see them in my 12 hour shift because I supposedly am not able to remember what they look like, one would be mad. Does that leave me prone to error in some wild situation where I might mistake some other person for my patient? Maybe. But making such a rule would be like reducing the speed limit to 10 mph so there are no crashes. It's just not logical. We do things how we do them and we do our best.

But you betta be washin yo hands!

Great post!!!

Specializes in Medical Surgical.

How in the world do you not cut corners?? I am a perfectionist; it has slowed me down all my life. But NOBODY can follow all the rules in a typical shift. Another thing about all that hand-washing; if you don't get them perfectly dry (who has the time), then you have trouble getting the gloves on for the next patient. Since nobody can handle the patient loads we get, staff get cynical and get slacker and slacker until they hurt someone or break some huge rule and get caught, then they're fired. How about some reality in the mix, management?

last I heard C. diff is not airborne.

But you might touch something and not know it! You never know when you'll be in a patient room and lose control of your bodily functions, and you have to be wearing full isolation gear just in case!!!!!!!

Throwing stones at others when you are also guilty? Really, who has not shaved an occasional corner? We nurse under the gun constantly. Things are time stamped in some charting systems. Being late on meds, even routine, is not acceptable! Time and performance equal revenue these days...your facilities paycheck and yours. The higher "ups" will not tolerate any lags in your performance. You will be terminated if you can not keep up. You do what you have to do to care for ALL your patient and what you have to do to keep your job and your sanity. I function on the priority of tasks and the acuity of my patients. The one that continually rings the call light for pillow fluffing and pulling the covers up when they have two good hands does not equate with the one on life support, multiple pressors, and chest tubes down the hall! I call us the"Stepford Nurses". Maybe we need a headset and a pair of skates! Oh, and "would you like fries with that"?:roflmao:

Sorry about the typos! I am learning to use a tablet with with a virtual keyboard. Technology is very important..LOL!

Specializes in Family Medicine.

I don't do thank you notes. Rarely do care plans. No AIDET for me. Sometimes, I skip a hourly round (gasp!).

Turning doesn't always happen q 2 because I'm not doing it on my own (I've got a back to protect!) and I can't always find someone to help me.

I waste a lot of IV fluids (if I'm in your room and there is 150 ml's left and I know I won't be back for a while because I'm getting an admission, I'm hanging the next bag NOW).

Sometimes, I don't wear gloves when I give people mosquito bites (aka insulin shots).

Hand-washing, alcoholing, and gowning for isolation are corners I don't cut.

You were clearly in the right in the situation you descirved there,.

The end.

There was "no way" someone who is no weight bearing on one side and has an immobilizer on the other side can be transferred correctly by one person unless that person is slinging them over their shoulder.

And that's the situation I was talking about.

Specializes in PICU, NICU, L&D, Public Health, Hospice.

I suppose that we all cut a corner or two during the course of our care over the span of a career.

Keep in mind, however, that what we practice over and over becomes habit.

Do not practice bad nursing over time if you do not want to be a bad nurse.

Specializes in ED, ICU, PSYCH, PP, CEN.

I always try to do everything exactly right. However, I am human and sometimes fail. I do reflect back on the care I gave each of my patients and look for ways I could have done better. I always alcohol swab ports. Change CVC line dressings, foleys with sterile technique. I take a lot longer with my patients than some of the other nurses I work with do. But it works out for me because I would rather take care of my patients than spend work time on facebook.

There are some shifts where all you can do is keep them alive, but fortunately not so many. I am lucky to work in a place that is usually well enoughed staffed that things can be done in a timely manner. I love the ICU. I consider myself a work in progress and am always looking for ways to improve my patient care and outcomes.

But you might touch something and not know it! You never know when you'll be in a patient room and lose control of your bodily functions, and you have to be wearing full isolation gear just in case!!!!!!!

Perfect nurses do not have bodily functions.:whistling:

Cutting corners is exactly why I am leaving my current position. I spoke to my manager to tell her why I was leaving. I was noticing that the culmative effect of everyone HAVING to cut corners is impacting LEVEL AND QUALITY care. She said she disagrees....how the hell would she know, she never gets off her FAT *** and works the floor so would have no idea. FED UP.COM therefore I am going elsewhere!

I'd be a handless nurse if I washed my hands every time I entered and before I exited a room, and I feel it isn't cutting corners when I'm hitting restart on an iv pump and don't wash my hands before and after that. I never leave pills untaken. I always take measures to reduce harm such as swabbing ports with alcohol and providing Foley care with each diaper change. However, some policies were created by people who don't work bedside.

Doesn't your place have alcohol gel? I'm pretty anal about this, b/c with kids in particular, they get stuff so sick--just too easy to spread stuff from fomites and so forth. It will rip your hands apart to scrub every time, but not to use gel properly. Now for changing diapers and things like that, yes, I do still do the hand scrubbing. . .which is probably why my hands look they belong on a 100 year old. Same thing with dressings, yes, even if I am using gloves. There is just too much crap floating around and too much resistance.

And if the soap is not antibacterial, you are supposed to dry after and f/u with alcohol gel, rubbing vigorously.