getting report

This is what we do:

We have an assignment sheet for each shift - Days, PMs, and Nights. These are written in pencil and held onto by the charge nurse. It lists each nurse who will be working during that shift and what babies she is assigned. This is where we look to see what our assignments are. It also lists who is first, second, and third admit - plus who their babies are delegated to if they do get an admission (we give up our assignment when we get new admissions). It'll say who is holding the high risk delivery pager, who is supposed to check each crash cart that shift, etc. While the charge nurse hangs onto this pencil-written copy (so changes can be made) and files it away after the shift, there are copies made that float around for all to see, and these are recycled at the end of the day - the hospital shreds them first of course.

We do nurse-to-nurse bedside report, of course, at change of shift. This usually only lasts 10-20 minutes because we have very nice patient care summaries printed out from the computer system which has all the current orders for each baby plus an MAR. On weekdays, we do a full unit report at 7am, 3pm, and 11pm - weekends it's only at 7am and 7pm because most people do 12 hour shifts on the weekends. For this report, we meet at the beginning of our shift in the conference room and the charge nurse tells all the oncoming nurses what's going on in the unit. She'll have a page of "highlights" that doesn't talk about every baby - usually only about half of them. It's not a full report at all - just like, "Baby Jones is going home later today, Baby Smith is the new admit - 24 weeker, honeymooning, Baby Brown just came back from surgery and has been getting transfusions nonstop..." so that we know what the major news is and what nurses might need an extra hand or two that shift. She'll tell us what kinds of babies are in L&D so we know what kind of admissions we might be in for and also what doctors are currently on call. She'll also make unit announcements at this time - like if there are any big unit changes or news, if we're collecting money for a gift for a staff member, etc.

This report takes 10 minutes or so, and then we go get bedside report.

We have a large whiteboard at the nurses station (ICU) with room numbers and patient initial and diagnosis. The incoming shift allocation is written on the whiteboard. ANM gives general rundown on the ward, then we split off to our patient assignments for bedside reports. We have 30mins overlap allocated for shift handover.

We do 12 hr shifts. The charge nurse does the assignments for the next shift on the computer and prints them out. We have individual RN phones so everyone gets a copy of the assignment sheet when they come in with the list of phone #'s that everyone will have. We get general report for 5-10 min from the charge nurse of prev. shift and then go to receive bedside report. We have a kardex at the bedside with all pertinent info. on the patient (a nurses communication sheet) that way, if anything was missed in report it can usually be found on the kardex.

HTH

Jenny

I have only been on the unit for 2 days so I don't know all the small details yet but we have a sheet that has all the pt assignments in our conference room. It is done by the charge rn. We then get report at the bedside from the offgoing nurse. All of the charts are kept at the bedside so if you need additional info it is right there and you can also start looking over things is the offgoing nurse is giving someone else report or isn't ready yet. It takes about 15-20 min.