"New staff" reference manual for the ED

[Joshua21]

Dear Educators,

I've been chosen to create a hospital specific pocket reference manual for new staff to ease transition. I know this is far from new and I know there are others in cyber land who have experience in this. I've been racking my brain trying to think of what are the useful policies a new Grad or Hire would like to have at hand in a portable pocket book. Not much success so I now turn to you all. Could you please throw some ideas at me? Again what I'm specifically looking for:

Policies and Procedures that are common but maybe slightly different in each ED

Common Policies and Procedures that are used enough to need to know but not often enough to become routine

Routine Policies and Procedures

Items that help you to hit the floor running. An example is P&P for hanging blood. I will post this in other pertinent forums but I hope to get a great response here.

Our hospital is primarily Cardiac and Neuro, 40 bed ED with,...yes with borders occasionally.

Thankyou all

Jeff

[VickyRN, MSN, DNP, RN]

See if these will be of any help :)

http://www.4nursingmanagers.com/

http://www.enursescribe.com/polproc.htm

http://www.sh.lsuhsc.edu/policies/policy_manuals_via_ms_word/Nursing/nursing_toc.htm

http://www.intra.ccgh.com/Nursing%20Policies/NursingTOC.htm

http://www.lhsc.on.ca/critcare/icu/cctc/procprot/nursing.htm

[paranurse]

Have you thought of doing a watered down version of you unit's P&P or Tmt Protocols? Kinda like Coles Notes or a Reader's Digest (Must knows). The exercise can be helpful for organizing or starting your thinking plan. I made a quick reference compilation that gave people page#s for the actual references. Then after gettting a couple guinea pigs to srictly use this, I was able to develop a trg handbook that was really developed by the nurses who ned it.

Some med schools provide similar for their Residents, maybe youcould use a blueprint?

Where in Canuckland do you work, maybe I can help?

[purplemania, BSN, RN]

My experience has been that people will not carry this around and read it when needed because of the bulk and infrequent need. We have all of our P&P's online and accessible to all staff. If that is not an option you might consider a "Unit-specific Protocols Manual" easily accessible to all, with a good table of contents in the front. I also made a "Documents" binder with a copy of all the forms used on each unit. The table of contents helped them locate the right form, then they can see what it is they are looking for and have the order number to order more. The unit secretaries and nurses alike use these books.

[purplemania, BSN, RN]

My experience has been that people will not carry this around and read it when needed because of the bulk and infrequent need. We have all of our P&P's online and accessible to all staff. If that is not an option you might consider a "Unit-specific Protocols Manual" easily accessible to all, with a good table of contents in the front. I also made a "Documents" binder with a copy of all the forms used on each unit. The table of contents helped them locate the right form, then they can see what it is they are looking for and have the order number to order more. The unit secretaries and nurses alike use these books.