Tuning in to patient cries

NO no no... call buttons going to an operator/dispatcher who can immediately dispo the call and dispatch the appropriate (available) staff would make WAY too much sense!

You know... like building hospitals with vent fans in the rooms (or at least in the bathrooms).

It's funny, because right after reading this article I had a patient who was really upset over how no one responded to the call bells in a timely fashion - not the first to complain obviously, but his complaint was very much at a system-level, like, something doesn't work if this is the only way to get help and it's not reliable. And frankly, he's totally right, although I think anyone is dreaming if they think it's ever going to be realistic for every patient to reliably always get a bedpan/ice chips/something they dropped/the light out within even 15 minutes. My hospital is thinking about moving to phones or pagers for the nurses so they are called directly vs. a central person, which would improve on some level but that's still not going to make me able to attend to the needs of all my patients immediately. Maybe if the techs had them too. And if we had enough techs...

Of course, this also comes at a time where the hospital is deciding we don't need unit secretaries overnight to answer call bells and telephones and all that. You know, because the patients are just all sleeping anyway, right ?

All that said, I also strongly feel part of the problem is that there's a growing crop of patients who feel just a little too entitled to immediate responsiveness and escalation, perfectly functioning equipment, and all blood draws and/or port accesses being on the first try - I'm a little tired of people being appalled that someone missed a stick or that their machine is beeping or that the nurse didn't immediately call the Dr into the room for a non-trivial issue. You'd think people would have some appreciation for prioritization, although.... did have a patient on the floor the other day who called in the nurse because she said she fell or something, and when the nurse came in it turned out the patient just wanted to know who had won American Idol.

It's a tough problem.

Yikes! The comments are pretty sad

'' Also some paraprofessionals compare their lack of status and power to a given patient's higher class... And overt or covert sadistic behavior can be manifested. ''

OMG!!! i cannot even begin to try to understand what the heck this is supposed to mean......

kind of makes you sad to read how the public perceives nurses. they have no idea how the workload and lack of resources affects the care.

You can't take a comment like that too seriously... that's like saying a pilot has an easy job because they just let the auto-pilot fly all day.

And they're right, I don't take care of the phebtoomy... that's not in my scope of practice :spin: