ER Report

[cnolan]

Recently (as in, two days ago) our hospital set into practice a new system for the ER giving the floor report. Apparently, the ER is going to just fax up a report sheet and send the patient up, which leaves the floor nurses completely oblivious to the new admit. (This happened the me - I was so shocked when a little girl came up to the floor to be admitted...I was like, "What on earth? Where was the report?") Well, in the ruckus of change of shifts, there it sat in the fax machine, along with UA's and CBC's until someone could stop for a minute and pick them up.

I understand that the floor nurses are busy, I defiantly understand ER nurses are busy and most times need beds, but do you REALLY think that this is safe? Patients coming up to the floor without warning - hopefully no one is unstable is all I've got to say.

[twinmommy+2, ADN, BSN, MSN]

Someone should at least be calling up to say that something is in the fax...definatly sounds like trouble waiting to happen.

[crmson_lady]

Where I work, the ED nurse faxes the report to the unit. Then he/she must call and verify the report was received on the unit. Once he/she knows the report printed out of the fax machine, they can let the patient be transported to the unit.

[Rio, ASN, RN]

our er faxes report because for years the inpatient units would bottleneck patient flow by not having the rooms cleaned , or the RN was too busy to come to the phone. Sure this happens we are all busy. But what our house supervisor found was that the floors would delay admissions until the change of shift then the rooms would suddenly become available. however we always call first and if the inpatient unit asks and we are able to accomadate , we will hold patients or space them apart as to not overwhelm the floors.

[ERNurse752, RN]

We fax report, but we always call first to verify it was received, and we always let the nurse know we are there with the patient upon arrival.

[jonear2, RN]

wow, i never thought of receiving a faxed report, but phone report works very well for our facility. It gives us a chance to ask pertinent questions which may not necessarily be written down. I am in agreeance that if report is faxed then a follow up call to make sure that the fax is recieved is warranted. Interesting.

[zacarias, ASN, RN]

Our ER started to do this months ago. It isn't a perfect system but what they usually do is fax up the report, and call up to see if it was received. Then they say the pt will be up in a half-hour unless there is a major problem and then we might come to another arrangement.