Discharge and Admissions teams

[elliemae519]

Hello, I work in a 450 bed inner city hospital and we are considering using a discharge and admission "express" team to help facilitate discharges and admissions. We are starting with the discharge aspect first. Does anyone have any such teams at their facility and would be willing to share some info? I would really love to hear from you. We are already getting positive feedback from the nursing staff. But this team does not replace our discharge planners/case managers. Thanks!

[AtlantaRN, RN]

At my facility south of atlanta, this has been in process for the last 6 years. It is a great idea if you have the right nurses doing this function. I have seen it make lazy nurses even lazier. To the point that it is frustrating to the staff nurses...esp when a staff nurse sees their "admissions" nurse do one admission at a time, where the staff nurse already has 5 patients and manages to assess and admit a 6th patient in 1/3 the time the "admissions" nurse does the job.

If you have a few driven individuals who indeed push themselves to not only admit patients, but also do the stat labs, get ivs started; and then pass this patient off to the floor nurse----your staff nurses will love it, and patients will flow onto the unit....

But, in my facility, we see admission nurses that do the admission computer entry for history and such, but then defer the actual assessment to the floor nurse (which frankly isn't that much of a benefit as most floor nurses given the option would rather have that nurse working on the floor with her so the patient load would be lighter). Indeed if your assessment nurse gets the patient admitted, and fluffed and tucked, it would work great.

Just one nurses observation.

linda