Does your facility allow the floor/unit nurses write up other nurses?

[DayDreamin ER CRNP]

I got a QRR / write up a few weeks ago from the floor nurse because I sent up a patient from the ER with a 212 blood glucose, a 2.7 K+, the pt was NPO and I did not have an MD order to treat the BG. What I should probably mention is that I called report 3 times to the nurse who never came to the phone and I had to clear the bed for a Level 1 coming in. I wound up taking the pt up and giving bedside report.

My charge nurses just rolled their eyes over this one and I wrote a lengthy reply about the K+/insulin connection, reminding the nurse that the pt WAS NPO nor did I have an order.

Got another write up yesterday from another unit nurse for, get this, "Not properly completing Heart Cath consent form" and "Not prepping (shaving) patient for Cath procedure." I sent the consent for up with the chart but the cardiologist had not been in to see the patient yet and her cath was delayed a few hours. When I got the pt to the room the nurse even asked me about the consent form and I told her that and she just rolled her eyes. Ummm HELLO? There is a spot to initial that plainly reads, "I have spoken with my physician about the risks and benefits of this procedure." Having a patient sign there would be FALSIFYING DOCUMENTS!!!!!

I'm still scratching my head over this one. I'm still a rookie but never have we ever had a patient sign a consent form w/o the patient talking to the MD first, nor do we ever, ever shave a patient for cath. If they go straight to cath, the cath staff does all the procedure prep.

I guess what gets me all butthurt about the whole situation is what did the other nurse hope to gain from the write up?

It is common across the board for floor/unit nurses to expect ER nurses to do everything for them or what? I have never been a floor nurse but I did work as a tech through school (1+ years) so I have a pretty good idea of how it works up there. While I am a new nurse, I have over 18 years of corporate-type experience and I have never seen so much animosity between departments! I also don't get how a BS write up manages to go all the way up the chain to that dept nurse manager. Especially the untreated BS one. Doesn't that NM know that you can't treat an NPO pt with insulin? SHEEESH!

Seriously, if you have time to write up another nurse for this kind of BS, then maybe YOU could complete the prep and paperwork.

Does your facility allow nurses in other departments to write up nurses? What's the process and how does your ED handle these types of write ups?

[msjellybean]

everything's been pretty much covered previously, but just wanted to throw in that at my facility, unless it's for two very specific populations, the ED is not required to call report on any patient it sends up to inpatient units... (not sure if this is true for ICU, but definitely true for med/surg & stepdown)

Wow. That's frightening.

[brillohead, ADN, RN]

Take it down a few notches, I'm not the one who wrote you up. At my place of employment we do not give bedside report.

But they weren't talking about at your place of employment.... and your comments were not relevant to the discussion at hand. So maybe it's YOUR "notches" that are a bit out of whack here?

[vinsonmm]

AMEN!

[ZippyGBR, BSN, RN]

If you didn't do anything wrong, I wouldn't worry about it. Anyone can write anyone else up, anytime. What did your manager/supervisor say about this? It doesn't surprise me to hear about the animosity between departments -- I think this is actually quite common in hospitals. You know the saying...Everything is always greener on the other side of the fence...

Good luck to you!

anyone can make a complaint / 'write someone up' or raise an incident, what is most important is what is done with it by your manager and what if anything is recorded regarding the incident in your personnel files.

[dnnc52]

In all my many years as a nurse working in so many different units, and yes been written up a few times. But the worse writup against me that floored me was a writeup from a ward secretary. Who was given so much authority that it amazed all of the nurses. Well I booked out of that unit STAT!. Still I shake my head thinking about it. A non-professional trying to make a nurse judgement call. But the worse was simply that management was afraid to deal with her as well...Go figure?