Flow sheets

[ashhie]

Hey everyone!

I work at a small hospice turned acute care hospital and we are looking to revamp our flow sheets to be all integrated into one. This includes everything from vitals to pain to N/V. I was wondering if anyone had any examples of something like this, at least for a jumping off point? We are still using paper charting, and will be for 2 or 3 more years. I've been bouncing around the older posts but a lot of what I found were specific flow sheets.

Thanks guys!

[nurseprnRN, BSN, RN]

we derived ours from samples of others' work. why not go on a field trip to nearby hospitals and get samples? or write letters to the staff ed departments at a number of places, enclose a sase, and see what you get. then you could derive your own.

for what it's worth, when our icu went from different sheets for i&o, abgs, vs, notes, ivs and hemodynamic gtts, and medications to one big integrated 24-hour sheet the size of 6 pages, easy to fold in thirds and then in half to see one shift at a time, the unit had an exponential increase in understanding physiology and advanced assessment. when you see one column for an hour's time that shows you what happened to the cardiac output, peripheral resistance, u/o, abgs, and vs when you tweak a gtt, the light dawns. it was astonishing.

[canned_bread]

I just did some research and found you a standard one we are using in NSW, Australia. It is located below. NSW has started a new initiative called "between the flags" which basically makes it obvious on the form what is normal, what is not and what stands for calling criteria (unless altered_. It is used in hospitals only. Anyway, you can see the form at the link below.

Observation chart