Dear Nurse Beth Advice Column - The following letter submitted anonymously in search for answers. Join the conversation!
In your situation, the primary challenge is managing your workload efficiently while ensuring that patient care remains uncompromised. Here are a few strategies to consider:
Focus on the patient you are currently with. It's important to provide undivided attention to the patient in front of you to ensure high-quality care.
If the call bell rings while you are with a patient, unless it is an emergency, continue to prioritize the immediate needs of your current patient.
In summary, continue to prioritize the patient you are attending to and work towards a more efficient system that reduces the reliance on the call bell for scheduling. Clear communication with your team and optimizing workflow can help manage the workload better.
Published
Call bell is used by the provider to get the nurse into the room to schedule an appointment for the patient to come back. I am a traveling nurse I work at a primary care clinic where we have 3 providers, 2 nurses, and 1 part-time transporter (uber driver) / 1/2 time receptions who does not use a computer to do her job, she is 84 years old, so it is unlikely that she would be trained to check in or check out patient. I work at a primary care clinic where we have very few staff members because the facility could not find people who are willing to work for less than $20 an hour. Besides doing nurses' responsibilities at this facility nurses are expected to check and check out patients in addition to scheduling an appointment for patients to come back. I and another nurse split providers I work with providers who have 30 + patients per day and she works with 2 other high-maintenance providers. Once in a while her provider used a call bell to get the nurse into the room, so we could schedule an appointment for the patient to come back. I have too many patients, so every time I hear call bell I am rooming the patient. I usually choose to ignore the call bell because I am busy with patients. What would you do in the situation? Would you continue working with your patient or apologize and leave room to schedule an appointment for another patient to come back?
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