bridge the gap: Article Hospitals must educate nurses about health care costs

toomuchbaloney · Jul 12, 2016

The ideas that corporate needs a better understanding of their front-line conditions and that nursing needs to understand cost containment and budgeting constraints are not mutually exclusive. I'm not really sure where the argument is. They both need improvement, hands down.
It's no secret that the top can be incredibly short-sighted. They want better satisfaction scores but then give a nurse seven patients. They want to improve employee retention but don't listen to their nursing staff. They want to save money, but then opt for the solution that will cost triple in the long-term.
But on the other side, nursing has a lot to learn. My experience is minuscule compared to some here, but I can't tell you how many times I've received patients in pain days into admission, or how many times I have patients that don't understand what a medication is or why they're getting it. How many times have you personally walked past a call light? I can admit I'm guilty. Every one of these things is tied to HCAHPS, which in turn is tied to reimbursement.
It's a complex issue with no easy answers, but no one should be fooled into thinking it's all administration or all nursing.

In my view, most of the things that you mentioned would be remedied by not assigning that nurse 7 patients and/or by the management listening to the needs of the nurses who are going to provide the actual care.

MaxAttack, BSN, RN · Jul 22, 2016

In my view, most of the things that you mentioned would be remedied by not assigning that nurse 7 patients and/or by the management listening to the needs of the nurses who are going to provide the actual care.

I'm honestly confused.

It doesn't take me more than a minute to do a pain assessment, including the effectiveness of their current pain management. And our system has a pop-up that displays the class and common side effects when you scan a medication that I can read to the patient as I'm scanning in meds. I'm not saying everyone doesn't do these things, but I find these things lacking much more than they should be. Are you honestly suggesting the assignment or management is to blame for not taking the minute to properly assess or the few seconds to read a screen out loud..?

toomuchbaloney · Jul 22, 2016

I'm honestly confused.
It doesn't take me more than a minute to do a pain assessment, including the effectiveness of their current pain management. And our system has a pop-up that displays the class and common side effects when you scan a medication that I can read to the patient as I'm scanning in meds. I'm not saying everyone doesn't do these things, but I find these things lacking much more than they should be. Are you honestly suggesting the assignment or management is to blame for not taking the minute to properly assess or the few seconds to read a screen out loud..?

I am honestly saying that nurses are considered a financial liability to inpatient facilities. Nurses do not bill and therefore, in the eyes of the bean counters, do not bring tangible value to the equation. Consequently, credible research which demonstrates that patient outcomes improve measurably with increase in their direct interaction with RNs is largely ignored and nurses continue to be the group of professionals who are cut or asked to the work of others in order to save the organization money.

I'm not going to argue that there are not incompetent, lazy, or ineffective nurses out there because there certainly are. They do not represent what is profoundly wrong with the delivery of care, they represent what is wrong with for profit college.