Need help with those familiar with rapid response

Specialties MICU

Published

Ok, We've all done the IV starts, the BS calls as well as the legit ones.

We have a charge nurse on a med surg. floor in our facility that is "well known to rapid response", to the point that nurses are refusing to take the "beeper" when she.. L is there.

Have you ever come across a nurse, esp. charge RN (not taking care of pt.'s who's job it is to assess and stabilize, that calls you for the craziest complaints, makes a DNR, who's dying... calls the doc enough that the MD is soooo frustrated that they order an ICU admit, which is beyond inappropriate just to get the patient off the floor and this nurse off their back?

I'm not kidding, she is infamous, instead of using common sense and nursing judgement, she calls rapid response and finds ANY way... and will make the patient think their dying... to get to the ICU??

Does anyone have a single nurse, that abuses RRT, with 4 plus calls a night that are not legit, but worries the doc to the point that they demand transfer to stop her from calling?? This woman is nuts!!

We are in the process of documentation (writing her up), but we'll see. Any suggestions?

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Go to her manager?

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Specializes in Nephrology, Cardiology, ER, ICU.

I would try to re-educate her on the role of rapid response. If that didn't work, then I would most definitely document every encounter with said nurse.

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Specializes in ER/ICU, CCRN, SRNA (class of 2010).

I would goto my manager (yours in this case) since they are running the unit(s) and in charge of the personel on the RRT. This should expose the situation and result in some swift review and changes if needed. If this brought me no satisfaction I would goto the Director and cont moving up the chain until the situation was resolved.

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Specializes in ICU, telemetry, LTAC.

She sounds kinda scary to me, because she's wasting a lot of effort on not taking care of her patients.

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I agree with previous responses, go to your supervisor with the documentation of the whys of the patient not needing a RRT call. And then your supervisor should go to hers, maybe she doesn't need to be a charge nurse, perhaps from inexperience???? My frustration being a member of the RRT is that when the nurses wait to late to call us and then by the time we get the call the patient is in a full arrest situation when it could have been avoided with early intervention perhaps.

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Thanks for the feedback, sorry a bit late with the "thank you". Our system is political, like many and our service line director (our direct boss) is not in the same service line over her manager.

At first, of course we try educating, she just sees every change in status as a rapid response call, and she's been a nurse for many years:uhoh3: We've tried talking to her until we're blue. Then we started an unwarented call log. This was seen as Rapid response nurses "trying to get out of calls and creating a fearful environment in staff placing them".

Well dang, this leaves writing her up in a "situation requiring further education" mode given to the clinical instructor... as no policies have been breached. When you show up on the floor for follow ups you just cringe when she sees you and everytime says "good, glad you're here there's a few patients I want you to see". I've tried saying, "just here to do some follow ups, really busy tonight, perhaps you can trouble shoot them- if you REALLY need me then just give me a beep."This nut job said- "we'll I'll just go and beep you then, do you need one for each room?!!!!":angryfire This charge nurse simply does not get it!

Because things haven't improved, I'm worried that the clinical instructor is ignoring our "write ups", and worry that going to the manager is circumventing our service line directors instructions to "just keep working with her and stop the remarks to discourage calls! ugh.

Is this crazy or am I so frustrated that I can't see the simple solution?

thanks for listening.

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Specializes in ICU, oncology.

I definitely feel for you. I would say to document everything then take it to your manager if she/he does not do anything to help then go to the PIA nurses manager. I think it would be most helpful to treat it as an educational piece saying something like, "while doing QI on our RR calls we have noticed there are some nurses who have called for the team for non-emergent reasons and we would like to do some education."

We have just started doing RR at our hospital and it is assigned to an ICU nurse daily. We still have our own patient assignments on top of this. We find this to be very stressful. What is it like in your hospitals?

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