Do you fax reports to the floor? Can you share your experience with this?

Sorry,we still call report to the receiving RN.

We face the same issues in our PACU. And are currently looking for alternatives to help move the patients through more efficiently, but safely.

One of the projects we are undertaking is initiating faxed or electronic reports to the floors...just beginning with this. We spend so much time on hold waiting for the floor nurses to come to the phone!

To answer your other questions:

We do place the appropriate pump tubing on all patiets, all our fluids are admin. via pumps in here. We do not hang the ordered postop maintenance IV's esp. if they have KCl in them, as we do not generally transport with the fluids on the pump...unless of course they are monitored/receiving kcl replacement.

Our nurse/patient ratio is 1/2.

We do computer charting.

We do give warm blankets to everyone.

Minimal temp to leave is 96.8F or 36C

We are primarily an inpatient PACU. Our hospital has a same day surgery center on site...HOWEVER, we do often get daystay patients who need to be discharged. since we don't have a phase 2 area, they stay in the main pacu and are fed, dressed and discharged from here. This is also consumes alot of nursing time that could be used recovering phase 1 patients. We have limited space here. The daystay unit is not open on weekends or holidays either.

There is not a consideration as far as I know for MRSA or VRE patients as far as the time of day they are scheduled. We usually do the scheduled early morning admissions first, then inhouse addons later...depending on the urgency of the case of course.

We are not supposed to have any beverages in the unit...

Personal calls are not a huge issue, everyone seems to be pretty reasonable with them. Occasionally we have someone who needs to be reminded to keep them to a minimum. They are allowed within reason.

We have hired some novice nurses here( just a few years med-surg experience), but find that the best fit for our unit usually comes from ICU or Intermediate Care Rn's who know cardiac rhythms/emergency meds and are used to handling complex patients. We care for all cases except the open-hearts. (we have a separate unit for pedi patients during the day until 6pm, then take those patients at night and on weekends also)

A few novice nurses have had the personality and adaptability to work well here. Some have required extensive orientation and still are not at ease with the heavier cases.

Hope this is helpful!