Often nurses on the floor, while in their busiest minutes of their day, and sometimes even during a crisis, are hunted down by phlebs, radiology techs, physical therapists, care managers, random consults, dietary aides over innocuous issues or pesty requests. These requests come from a group of staff who generally are not accountable for a patient load, but have one job that they perform over and over on multiple patients throughout the day and are not sensitive to the cloud of responsibility hanging over nurses, who are trying to keep track of 10 other things that people have come by to tell them.
"Your patient in room 4 asked for water."
"There's a dime sized blood stain on your patient's sheet (from when they drew blood)."
"Your patients armband is missing (when its on their ankle)."
"Where's this patient's nurse?"
"Your patient in room 7 wondered if you could help them with the TV."
Meanwhile, you're running around looking trying to get pain medication, or you're settling a fresh post op, or stepping a patient up, or trying to prevent a rapid response. You know that what the person says may be important, but it's not something you aren't already cognizant of or something that needs addressing immediately.
Sometimes these staff want you to tell the doctor this or that, and you just want to say "Leave me alone damn it. Why don't you ******* tell them to order it?"
The best is when they pop on the unit for the 15 minutes they need to do their job, see that something is amiss in the patient's room, and they adopt an attitude suggesting that you haven't been paying attention to your patients.
What is your opinion on pesty ancillary staff? Do you experience it, or this just trumped up? What do you think it stems from?
Thank God I work in Homecare! In Homecare PT, OT, PC and nursing all work as a team. I use PT, OT, and HHAs to my full advantage and they can be extremely helpful as long as communication is left open :)
When I did work in the hospital setting you're right the situation is a lot different! Usually I just responded with a short and sweet "OK thank you for notifying me. I'll take care of it as soon as I can." Then maybe write the room number or pt initials down real quick so they see you are serious and listened to them.. then they'll walk away lol
Do you seriously not know what a phlebotomist is or are you saying that sarcastically to imply you have to do your own blood draws?
I know many facilities don't have phlebotomists (or PCT's and other ancillary help) and the nurses do all the draws, but usually those facilities have a lower patient/nurse ratio too.
Luckily, PT/OT are usually pretty good about attending to patient needs that they can perform during their sessions. If they put a fall risk up to the chair, they will get a chair alarm. Blankets, water, etc. before they leave, they will do it. There are two that have adversarial relationships with nursing, implying we aren't doing our jobs re: comfort. Meh, whatever. I know we are doing our best, so if they want to make the patient super-dooper comfortable with getting them green jello rather than red jello, have at it!
What gets me, and that I've addressed with management, are fall risks close to falling, but for some reason, the person has left the patient's room to tell me. Or, alarms going off and only the nursing staff answers them. I've requested that management facilitate a culture change where bed alarms and chair alarms are expected to be answered by everyone, with a call to the nurse from the room.
I refuse to be the go-between for any ancillary staff to the doctors. If lab wants to know if they can add new labs to the morning draw, I give them the name and pager of the intern. "Good question, and I don't want the patient to be stuck anymore than they have to, too. The doc's name is X, and his pager is 12345. It's really a medical decision, not a nursing one. Thanks for calling." Click. Of course, if I know it can't be added, I'll say so. Same for RTs or any imaging staff that wants to push the test to the next day. If I know things can't be changed or delayed, I'll say so, but even if I know it can, it's out of my scope to make that decision.
Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
From RNDynamic
"Your patient in room 4 asked for water."
"There's a dime sized blood stain on your patient's sheet (from when they drew blood)."
"Your patients armband is missing (when its on their ankle)."
"Where's this patient's nurse?"
"Your patient in room 7 wondered if you could help them with the TV."
"The sign above his head clearly states that he's NPO. Thanks for reminding him of that." or "Feel free to give him what's in the cup sitting beside his bed. Thank you."
"Thank you for taking care of that for me! The sheets are in the cupboard in the corner of his room."
"Did you check his ankle?"
"As you can see on the white board at the nurse's station, Floyd has that patient and the patient in room 6. If you don't see him in the substation between the two rooms, try room 6. Or you could just call his Ascom phone."
"It doesn't take a registered nurse to help with the TV, but it does take one to hang this blood that I'm hanging. I'm sure he'd be thrilled if YOU helped him with his TV."
Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
What is a phlebotomist? Never seen one. Sometimes I'll mess with the doctors who say "I think your patient in room ## had a bowel movement" with "oh and you didn't clean her up???"
Our doctors would HELP me clean it up if need be. I'm lucky! (Or maybe I'm just old enough to ask for help when a younger nurse would say, "No, no, I'm OK.")
I agree with other posters who say we deal with this a lot less on nights. While sometimes I want the ancillary staff around, in general I am really grateful that they are not as present on my shift. This goes for management, attending physicians, social workers, case managers, RT, ect...
I miss them sometimes. Like when a patient needs to speak to dietary, I need to find out certain test schedule times (radiologist comes at 0800), someone has a question about billing, wants to see a patient advocate... And the list goes on. I always feel like I'm dumping on day shift when I tell the oncoming muse, "so and so needs this or that, but you need to discuss it with THIS person" (who isn't present on my shift).
The positives outweigh the negatives. I couldn't stand being approached every ten minutes by dietary, PT/OT, case manager, every single specialist on the patients case, ect... No thanks! I get that as the primary RN, we are the only person dedicated to the patient as a whole. However, we have 5 or 6 patients to take care of, and can't possibly be able to take all that input/questions from everyone else involved on their care.
The only non nursing staff who bug me at nights are the RT's, phlebotomists, and maybe unit secretary (until 21:00). I see them so rarely that usually instead of them bugging me with questions, I am more likely to be the one trying to hunt them down.
This reminds me of a time a few weeks ago when I was in a room with a new admission. I was performing incontinent care. To make a boring long story short, I had a physician open the door while I was in the room to ask me about another patient. Seriously? I get it that you are a doctor, but you aren't THIS patients doctor, and she is naked. The question the doc had? "How is so and so doing, any changes?"
Yes, I may occasionally miss having the resources/other staff that day shift has, but I am more than grateful to work on a quieter shift. :)
Begs the question if you are spending time looking for issues, then looking for me to discuss said issues, the issue could have been dealt with already, by you........
While it may be annoying, I just have one comment. Would it be more annoying for them to pop a blanket on top of your patient that FINALLY doesn't have a fever? Or if they decided to grab your NPO patient a glass of water? I guess it depends on their tone, but most of the time other staff asks something like that it is because they don't want to step on anyone's toes.
Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
While it may be annoying, I just have one comment. Would it be more annoying for them to pop a blanket on top of your patient that FINALLY doesn't have a fever? Or if they decided to grab your NPO patient a glass of water? I guess it depends on their tone, but most of the time other staff asks something like that it is because they don't want to step on anyone's toes.
I want to work where you work. Most of the time when ancillary staff ask questions like this it's because they are too special to deal with it and they want you to leave what you're doing and look after that one little thing that they could have done so they won't feel guilty about not having done it.
I have more trouble with the manipulative pts telling OT/PT or case managers that they need pain meds when they just had them.
This happens all of the time! That plus asking for water when they know they have surgery >
It's also the reason our phlebotomists always ask, they know our patients Because I work a fairly regular schedule, I see the same phlebotomists every night.
Because I work nights I also don't have as many ancillary staff as everyone on days. I would be most annoyed if it was like Ruby Vee said. Shirking off a task you know you can do, or worse, looking at you like you aren't taking good care of your patients.
Because I work a fairly regular schedule, I see the same phlebotomists every night.
turtle0206
20 Posts
Thank God I work in Homecare! In Homecare PT, OT, PC and nursing all work as a team. I use PT, OT, and HHAs to my full advantage and they can be extremely helpful as long as communication is left open :)
When I did work in the hospital setting you're right the situation is a lot different! Usually I just responded with a short and sweet "OK thank you for notifying me. I'll take care of it as soon as I can." Then maybe write the room number or pt initials down real quick so they see you are serious and listened to them.. then they'll walk away lol