If Bill Gates gave you a billion dollars to start a new hospital from the ground...

[Roland]

up what would YOU do to improve bedside nursing at YOUR hospital? I've read many posts that have documented the poor situation with regard to bedside nursing in America. However, I havn't seen that much in the way of SOLUTIONS to the problem. As the hospital "owner" it would be your responsibility to balance earning a profit (even your billion will run out eventually), having good patient care, and keeping your nurses and doctors happy. I realize there is probably no "one" perfect solution, but I was hoping for a few innovative ideas.

[LVNurse]

GREAT idea for a thread!!

I will be thinking about this all night tonight at work (in ER). Thanks!

(I hope to contribute, but I look forward to everyone's ideas!

[KaroSnowQueen, RN]

Make nurse/patient and cna/patient ratios reasonable. Pay present staff more money than paying bonuses to people who will collect them, stay their specified length of time and quit! Give nurses more autonomy and say about patient care issues. Make bed board quit calling with fifteen admissions EVERY SINGLE DAY at shift change. Make doctors come at normal scheduled rounds rather than flit in whenever they get the notion - doctors at our hospital come anytime between 4am and 2am and seldom do they come at the same time every day! Have doctors actually explain to the patient what they plan to do and why, rather than spit out a quick medicalese sentence and leave it to the nurses to decipher chicken scratch orders and re-explain it to the pt and his distraught family. Have physicians TYPE all their orders in the computer!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[fergus51]

Nurse patient ratios would be top of my list too! In addition to that I would want nurse-doctor-administrator-patient relations to be on an even level, practice from a health promotion/prevention pov, provide educational inservices and opportunities to all staff free of charge, implement self scheduling, offer an 80% pay for four years with the fifth year off with pay scheme, on site day care, a health center for employees, free parking, mentorship programs for new grads and recent immigrant nurses, training in different specialties for nurses who want it, good lift equipment to decrease those injuries, .... Hon, I could go on for years about this one!!!

[Zee_RN, BSN, RN]

My first thought is a billion isn't enough :)

I'll have to give this some thought, though.

God knows I'd put reasonable areas on the same floor! Like O.R., ICU, E.D., Radiology on same floor! Gads, I hate taking a vented patient from the third floor ICU to the first floor radiology and the second floor O.R. at my hospital!!