Another "great idea"

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Okay, I'm curious to see what you guys will have to say about this. Management is very excited because they are working on a centralized scheduling system for pt care. What does this mean? Well, in the morning, the day shift nurse could log in and print out a schedule for each patient. It would say what time their tests/procedures would be, what time PT would work with them, what time the docs would come, etc. The goal is that the pt would be more informed about their care and know what their plan would be for the day. Great idea, right? I don't think so!!!!!

The whole motivation behind this is that we are getting bad scores on our Press-Ganey surveys because the pts say they had to wait a long time for ________, or didn't know when their ________ test would be done, didn't know if PT would be working with them that day, etc. So my question is this: what would make pts angrier, not knowing when stuff would happen (ie just knowing that they are "waiting for my CT scan"), or having a piece of paper that says "your CT scan will be at 9:00am" only to be pushed back to 11:30 that night because of traumas or whatever? I mean, out of the 1000+ beds at my hospital, how many of those schedules would go according to plan?

Has anyone tried this? What do you think???

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Specializes in Med-Surg/Peds/O.R./Legal/cardiology.

Brilliant management strikes again!! IMO, the patients would be even more upset with this when the "schedule" does not work out...and we ALL know it won't. When will they ever learn that we are working with HUMANS here and not machines? This is not a factory! They think they've seen low Press Ganeys now??? Just wait til this goes over!

Will these people EVER WAKE UP????

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I think you are going to be spending a lot of time explaining why other departments are running late, behind schedule, backed up, etc. It will take away from nursing care if you can't get out of the rooms of very angry patients who may have scheduled visits around their given schedule. And yes, I realize what I just wrote is absurd as they are in the hospital but ya know you will hear about it.

"You made me miss my family visit."

"I missed my show."

"I had a procedure during lunch and my food is cold."

"You told me I would be in PT at noon."

It will of course be the medical staff's treating them fault because that is who they will see day in and day out. Scores will probably go down.

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And it's all going to be thrown at the nurses. Like we don't have enough to do already! That's what I said when they told us, but they said it's going to be a real time schedule. Which means that it will always be changing. But the patients will only see the copy they get in the morning. So I say that they should hire a personal secretary for each patient to keep them updated on their itinerary, lol. This is going to be fun!!! ...Maybe they'll change their minds....

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Every time the patient complains about the schedule tell the manager to go speak with them. If all the nurses did this with each complaint maybe they would see just how bad it is. This really isn't a nursing issue..it's an adminstration and management issue so let them deal with it.

"My PT is late."

"I'm so sorry. Let me get my manager for you."

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Hey, now there's an idea...that might just make them rethink that policy!

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time to find out the hospitals ceo's phone number and accidentally leave it out on a card stating, "if you have any complants please call".

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