admission assessment team

[herephishy]

Does anyone use an admission assessment team for admitting ER or direct admits? We are exploring this as a possibility at our hospital. The idea is that (during peak admission times) a RN admits the patient, takes care of initial orders and then passes the patient off to the regular staff nurse. Seeing that it can be quite time consuming to admit a patient and we often hear complaints that it takes away from caring from other patients, we are considering this option. Does anyone do this? If so, which dept. do they work under, how is it going, does it save time, does the lack of continuity play havoc? I have many other questions, if I could just find someone whose hospital uses this type of system...Let me know...Thanks

[Tara]

A facilllity that I have worked at in the past used this process for a short time. It was abandoned as the admission nurse can only handle one admission at a time. The floor still ended up doing admissions. The admission nurse did an excellent job admitting the patients however, it took the admission nurse longer to admit than it took the floor nurses to admit. Most likely due to the admission nurse being passionate about her role and quite thorough. Maybe someone else has a better experience.