Everyday Nurse problems

This is easy ... Lazy People even with the latest technology...

We are supposed to scan armbands to identify patients, and they don't scan about 50% of the time. So we bring a sticker with a barcode to the bedside, or scan the chart before entering the room- which defeats the purpose of scanning an armband.

The armbands seem to be weighted so the part you are suppose to scan is at the lowest point. So annoying! Can you make everything Bluetooth so there aren't so many freaking cords? Call light, phone, BP, oximetry, NG tubes, oxygen tubes, iv lines. It's a freaking maze of cords. Why do we have to chart everything in a flow sheet but then have to write a note about everything from those same flow sheets? Stop the double/triple charting! Can we have a touch screen in the room (I was here, the patient peed, pooped, repositioned, ate, drank, the pain level, etc.) that automatically loads into the chart? Alerts when the lab fails to come to draw labs yet again? Wouldn't it be nice if that alert went to lab instead of being it being my responsibility to get lab to do their job. I can dream. Stop counting meds that have to be given with meals as "late" for my "meds given on time" score? If it's scheduled for 5 pm, it's "late" if the patient eats at 6pm. I can't really force them to eat earlier because I get dinged for them eating when they want.

Too many passwords, different requirements for different programs. Programs that won't let you go back to your old favorite password.

At one of my jobs, spell check is super easy and excellent. You just click on it, no right clicking. It's medical specific, with every obscure medication or terminology in its dictionary. Best spell check in the universe. At my other job spell check is medically ignorant.

It would be nice if the portable VS macines that we use on all of our patients would have a scanner attached to it and Bluetooth to transfer the vitals directly to the computer. I cannot tell you how many times they don't get documented by nurses and PCTs after the work was done to take them. Or somebody recorded the wrong vitals. To be clear, I am not talking about the besdide monitors that patients are connected to. This is about the vital machine on wheels that we use on every patient not connected to telemetry.

PLEASE! Whatever topic you choose, don't just go and invent something YOU think is a novel idea.

Just not too long ago, a guy here, wanted to 'improve' names on pt doors (or something like that). Just so nurses wouldn't 'get lost' going into a wrong room and 'freaking about it'.

He was trying to come up with some 'manufactured' NON-problem. If I recall correctly, he was not a nurse.

PP beekee has some nice ideas, like other nurses do.

AmoLucia: it was those pesky iso signs that some malcontent kept stealing so we'd never know who had special precautions, if we are both thinking of the same post.

How about a way to measure the intangibles nurses provide? We've been squeezed to the point we can only do the measurable things: pass meds, dressing changes, tube feedings, vital signs, admissions, etc. However, neither the nurse nor the patient is a robot. In order to improve the almighty customer satisfaction, we need to have time to smile, take a minute to hold a hand, chit chat with a lonely, scared patient. No one measures that stuff, but I'm sure it improves patient outcomes, improves patient satisfaction, improves staff morale and reduces staff turnover. But I'm not aware of anyone that has figured out how to measure the immeasurables.

I agree with BeeKee. Half my meds won't scan, and has been this way for years now. I make copies of the meds that won't scan, and send this to pharmacy, but apparently it does no good. People that were never a nurse, or an educator who hasn't touched a real patient in 20 plus years, makes up our flowsheets and decides how we chart. That makes no sense. The actual bedside nurse is never consulted about anything. If we give a medication early or late, there is no place to chart why we did this. ( I have worked in hospitals where the nurses were at liberty to decide what time meds should be given~ not anymore, now the pharmacy does, and they will put 2-3 different iv antibiotics due at the SAME time, so then you have to scan a med as late or early.) Equipment that never works. I have been using the same copier for years now, and every single night, it messes up and won't work. Really, I just need to get off here before I get more upset.

beekee - it was something like that. Don't remember all the details. Guy was NOT a nurse; had NO healthcare experience; was doing some research thesis type project that his hosp admin? thought would improve nurses' jobs/satisfaction.

I wonder how he finished?? I kind of felt sorry for him having been pulled into a 'classic' project of a NON problem to solve. And then the poor guy had to hear it all from us. :)

Re those ISOL signs - I wonder if the removal might have been r/t to some desire by ? to hide the fact that the pt had some 'awful embarrassing' disease. Or to some smarty pants person thinking ISO signs are "COOL" to hang outside the home bedroom door.

I find that there's a lot of amazing tech out there already...the problem is it's too expensive. So hospitals end up with piecemeal programs and equipment X that can't upload to chart system F, or if it can, it's with 85 different patches...it's a mess. Facilities buy the cheapest program they can get and then attempt to fix it until it's unrecognizable to the original system- or the contract only allows X amount of "strings" and you end up having to go back to paper because you literally can't create anything new. Every department has a different documentation program and none of them talk to each other. EMS has one program but it doesn't talk to the ED so that still has to be printed and put in the chart. Clinics use one program that doesn't talk to the hospital so patients come in and say "you have all my records" when asked about medical history...uh-huh not exactly...

I always see these commercials for tech innovation in hospitals and they make me laugh.

I want a "sticky" BP cuff. When a problem in the ER keeps moving around and the O2 sensor keeps falling off. I go get a sticky one. When the BP cuff gets wonky I either get no reading or wrong readings until I go adjust it. No my patient's BP is probably not REALLY 80/40, the cuff likely is loose/slipped sideways or otherwise off kilter, but what if it really is. I need to know that..

I meant "patient" not "problem" but I decided that maybe autocorrect was more honest than I was, so I'm leaving it.