How to deal with lazy OB nurse?

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Lately I’ve been getting report from a particular nurse (on labor and delivery), let’s call her nurse x. Every time I discovered missing documentation such as IV insertion, foley insertion, initial assessment, doctor communications, required admission information that isn’t completed.... (this is all part of the admission process and she of course is the admitting nurse). So guess who ends cleaning up? Me of course! I can understand if it was a busy shift and I’ll have to finish up here and there, but this is every single time. It’s a pattern... a habit and I’m getting tired cleaning it up. Recently I have pointed out to her during shift report her missing documentations and kindly ask her to do it before she leaves and she did. The next day, I didn’t get her patient, but the same thing happened again with my colleague who got nurse x’s patient. 
 

How can someone routinely not chart these things?! I mean her flow sheet charting is mostly blank with the exception of fetal heart tones charting. It looks like she’s done nothing the entire shift. No pain documentation either. I saw that her epidural charting only consisted of only charting one thing, the test dose time. That’s it! How do I deal with this? This isn’t a new nurse but senior nurse! How can management not be aware of this? How can no one never say anything or made any complaints!? 
 

If I say anything to management, wouls I become a bad cop? You know you have those nurse who report you on anything and everything. I don’t want to become that either, but it’s frustrating to get nurse x’s patients. If I say anything to management, will it get to her? And will it affect her relationship with me? I mean I love her as a person but not as my lazy colleague.

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Specializes in Mental health, substance abuse, geriatrics, PCU.

Sometimes it comes down to ignorance versus incompetence. If you get a long with her pretty well I would hesitate on getting management involved. Instead I might would pull her aside and just let her know you've noticed certain things don't get done on her admissions and that it would be really helpful if she could complete it in its entirety before passing it off. 

I want to give her the benefit of the doubt that she just doesn't know any better? But she is the admission nurse so.... 

Give her a chance to learn from her mistake, if that doesn't work, get your charge nurse or clinical leader or whoever your next person in the chain of command is.

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On 1/23/2021 at 5:18 AM, Nurse_hmoob said:

How can someone routinely not chart these things?! I mean her flow sheet charting is mostly blank with the exception of fetal heart tones charting. It looks like she’s done nothing the entire shift. No pain documentation either. I saw that her epidural charting only consisted of only charting one thing, the test dose time. That’s it! How do I deal with this? This isn’t a new nurse but senior nurse! How can management not be aware of this? How can no one never say anything or made any complaints!? 

Hear me out: Most of this is not truly your concern. I don't know how some people don't chart hardly anything. I don't care if their charting looks like they've done nothing the entire shift.

If there is documentation lacking that directly affects your ability to provide care, handle it in the moment and address it with her in a friendly, heads-up manner the next time you see her. Next time around, write an incident report.

If, rather than causing you actual problems in caring for a patient, this is more just that you are incredulous that a nurse could operate this way--that's simply not for you to worry about. It is for management to worry about.

Don't borrow trouble. ??

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Specializes in Mental health, substance abuse, geriatrics, PCU.
13 minutes ago, JKL33 said:

Hear me out: Most of this is not truly your concern. I don't know how some people don't chart hardly anything. I don't care if their charting looks like they've done nothing the entire shift.

If there is documentation lacking that directly affects your ability to provide care, handle it in the moment and address it with her in a friendly, heads-up manner the next time you see her. Next time around, write an incident report.

If, rather than causing you actual problems in caring for a patient, this is more just that you are incredulous that a nurse could operate this way--that's simply not for you to worry about. It is for management to worry about.

Don't borrow trouble. ??

Your post reminded me of a time I was working in the hospital and was starting my shift and as part of my routine I was looking at the 2100 meds for my patients. Pulled up the first one... big problem... check the 2nd.... same problem.... so on and so on for all of my patients. The nurse before had not documented ANY of the medications on her shift for ANY of her patients, there were stat and one time meds ordered that were still unmarked among the scheduled ones. The nurse had mentioned NOTHING about this in report. My first thought was that perhaps there was an unannounced downtime, IT issues, a meteor crashed into the unit? Something crazy must have happened, right? I mean this nurse had been at that hospital longer than me so it's not like she was new or anything.

Well, I called her up, she explained to her that none of her meds were charted on and she said "Oh, that's weird. Well I can tell you what I gave." Never did get an explanation as far as what happened, but you can bet I filed an incident report. 

Strangely enough this happened a couple more times to other people who relieved her and eventually she went PRN. It was really weird.

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23 minutes ago, TheMoonisMyLantern said:

Well, I called her up, she explained to her that none of her meds were charted on and she said "Oh, that's weird. Well I can tell you what I gave." Never did get an explanation as far as what happened, but you can bet I filed an incident report. 

Exactly. Handle it in real time, +/- fill out incident as appropriate. I definitely would've filled one out in the scenario you describe. And I never fill these out as if they are a "gotcha" or against a person. Just neutral.

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On 1/27/2021 at 12:33 AM, JKL33 said:

Hear me out: Most of this is not truly your concern. I don't know how some people don't chart hardly anything. I don't care if their charting looks like they've done nothing the entire shift.

If there is documentation lacking that directly affects your ability to provide care, handle it in the moment and address it with her in a friendly, heads-up manner the next time you see her. Next time around, write an incident report.

If, rather than causing you actual problems in caring for a patient, this is more just that you are incredulous that a nurse could operate this way--that's simply not for you to worry about. It is for management to worry about.

Don't borrow trouble. ??

Agree with this post. When I was remarking about a similar situation, someone pointed out to me that the same documented/undocumented information is available to the supervisors, whose job it is to supervise the other person.  Very insightful way of looking at it, especially since I complained about not being paid to supervise that individual.

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