How do you do it?

Nurses General Nursing

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does anyone have any ideas or techniques to incentivize nurses to get their discharges ready and out so new patients may be admitted and diversion can be avoided?

thank you in advance for your responses!

have an "discharge team" a float nurse or nurses, depending on the size of the unit(S). (and they could help with admits too)

Make staff understand that it is a 24/7 job and to take advantage of "teachable moments" to get some of the d/c instruction out of the way.

Lastly, involve case mgmt and other disciplines to make sure that everything is in place for the person to go home...

Make sure that the person has a dependable means of transportation home. Don't wait until they are signing d/c papers to do this.

Just ideas...but the most important issue is teamwork.

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Specializes in Telemetry/Med Surg.
also need to look at other reasons for delay besides nursing sometimes its a surpise d/c for both pt and staff .sometimes drs don't come in until late to do d/c orders .maybe its a ride or pickup for pt etc.i have worked at hospitals that have an out by 11 am expectation just so pts can be d/c and pt admitted it wa stressed to md and nursing that this was a priority .tweety i also have worked the floors and sympathize with your frustrations .especially being "buggrd q 5-10 min)to do d/c.

Yep..I agree, especially being 'reminded' constantly about it. Then there's the elder dear where you just got an order to DC his foley but he can't leave until he urinates, which can take awhile...and it goes on and on and on. Nothing I like more than discharging a patient but other time restraints or circumstances don't always make it an easy process.

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Specializes in Hemodialysis, Home Health.

Just one more reason I so love Home Health Nursing ! :D

sorry... couldn't resist. threadsneaker.gif

carryonsmiley.gif

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Specializes in Med-Surg, Trauma, Ortho, Neuro, Cardiac.
Tweety,

I understand your frustration. It's too bad we can't clone all the nurses like you (and me of course!) that are professional and take care of business. But I'm sure you realize that not every nurse practices that way. The challenge is how to motivate those who don't while appreciating those who do!

Yes, it is a challenge.

Go after the slackers for sure, but I guarantee that's not going to be good enough because most nurses aren't slackers, but the one's who are give us a bad name.

Or maybe I have rose colored glasses on??? :monkeydance:

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Specializes in cardiology-now CTICU.

i have to agree with the other posters who have said ask your nurses why d/c's take so long to get out. maybe it's a systems thing. my old floor (in large harvard teaching hosp)d/c's that you knew would leave the night before often didn't leave till 3-5 pm that day. the reason being d/t a policy that the attending of record see the pt before d/c. often the attending was in cath lab, or in clinic- outside the city! or if attending had seen pt and a resident was responsible for d/c orders they have attending rounds at noon, then they round on ICU pt's again then it's 2pm before you even GET d/c orders for the pt who of course needs VNA (which it was the RN responsability to arrange) and is newly diagnosed heart failure or DM or something rediculous (and of course no teaching has been done). no super nurse can get that all done by 3. i would have rather done 6 admits than 1 d/c on that floor. sooo painful. ask your nurses and get some insight.

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Specializes in Emergency/Trauma/Education.

Or maybe I have rose colored glasses on??? :monkeydance:

I think maybe that was the day you had yours on...but I had misplaced mine! :wink2:

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