Published
What's the worst report you ever got? Was it the report itself or the condition the patient was left in? Or did it have to do with the style of report the nurse gave?
Bonus Q: When will you stay late to help your coworker? I stayed to place a foley the other night as I had a good rapport with the patient and the order literally went in at 18:57.
Worst report? No report (but those were crazy circumstances). I gave myself report and asked the other nurses in the hall to fill in the details. That was a weird day...
I'll stay late to help and finish whatever task I started, or I'll help a bit if things are absolutely falling apart. If a coworker just wants help because they are lazy, then I refuse with a snarky smile on my face!
I don't care about report, as I work in an ER with computers.I can look up whatever I need a lot faster than a person can speak.
And I stay late frequently. If I have the time, and it is busy, I do what I can to ease the transition.
I LOVE this!!! If you can read it in the chart and it's not relevant to what's going on with the patient currently I really don't need to hear about it. Don't waste my time telling me about pappy's low back pain since 1957 unless it impacts the now. Maybe it's an ER Nurse thing I don't know
Left a patient and came back the next day to find the patient extremely confused, vital signs indicating severe sepsis, family members and night shift RN tell me patient was like that all night and no doctor was ever notified. Med student came into the room right after report and I reported my findings and she told me it wasn't a big deal so I paged the resident and said you need to come right now or I'm calling a rapid response. Unfortunately the patient had a perforated bowel and ended up dying.
The issue that I believe took place is that the nurse I gave report to is known to try too hard to try to be every patient and family memeber's friend and actual medical needs get overlooked. This is where patient satisfaction surveys are failing our patients. If only the general population new the real story behind what a nurse should be doing...
One of the worst reports I've witnessed and assisted in the subsequent code: obs floor was transferring a patient to the medical surgical floor. Last thing the obs RN told the receiving RN was that the patient was going into flash pulmonary edema. Apparently the receiving RN didn't know to question that and the patient arrived 20 minutes later, got pulled over into the bed, and literally coded.
I have been an RN for so many years with All Kinds of reports from none to detailed. Pretty much I try to go with the flow you know? But I have to say one of the comments that just gets under my skin is: "Well I have only had ------ for 4 hours." Ahhhhhhhh Sooooooooooooo!!!!!! LOL!
And yes I have stayed late to help, but often do not need to. I work straight 12 hour nights so it is hard to do that...but I am generally early to work and have taken report early loads of times or just helped.
Phoenix16, RN, MSN
107 Posts
I like your response. There are some nurses who want report from H&P even though the patient has been hospitalized for over a month. I provide what was given the previous shift, what happened on my shift, and anything that they may need to do on their shift. For ex. if the pt is on IV Vanco, then I make sure to tell the nurse when the next trough is due; or if the pt will be going to radiology or will be NPO etc. I'm sorry but if they want to know about lab results from 30 days ago that have since been resolved; then there is the computer.