How valuable is Report?

I feel report is very important!! I have had a few bad reports and it caused all kinds of problems. jmo

Report, for one thing, will help you to prioritize. You know which patients need to be seen first, which have treatments that were not completed, which require frequent interventions, etc.

If you had to check all the kardexes, charts, and lab reports yourself, you might not know that Mr. Jones needs to be readied for surgery in 30 minutes, or that Mrs. Smith doesn't yet know the results of her biopsy, or that the sweet little lady down the hall has a son who has threatened three of the nurses so far.

Those are just a few examples, but you can take it from there.

report is invaluable, at least to me! I dont know a nurse that has time to go through everything in order to get all the information that you get in report. For example, how the patients day was, what procedures were done or need to be done, any meds that were or were not given and why, new procedures started, blood tests needed and the list goes on and on.

I agree with the above poster about any family or patient issues that may not be in the chart. Also, I had a patient that had an HX of falls (three to be exact) and i would have looked through her whole chart (she had been in for over 120 days)...how long would that have taken to read through the whole thing???!! all shift probably.

Of course you look things up for yourself....but you just dont have time to look up everything.

And then you get that patient who does not fit with report at all. THat has happened to me at least a couple of times. You just have to go with what you see before you.

Report is very important. There are things about a patient that don't necessarily go onto the Kardex, charts, etc.

If you had to slog through all the written info on a patient before being able to take care of the basic, you would never catch up.

Spoken like a student!

Just give it awhile after you start working...you'll come around :)

I just want to echo what everyone else has said - particularly on your first day with those patients, this is the only way that you can get a snapshot of what's going on. iT can also be the only opportunity staff have to debrief about the problems they had in the preceding shift, and to share information that isn't documented - like that Mr X wants full-cream milk in his coffee. I know that's a really trivial example, but it's the first that came to mind!

Report is a look into the unit in a concentrated dose.

As others have said, you get information that's not charted or trivial information that can't be charted (threatening son, cream in coffee. etc). You can find out what happened with the patient from down the hall that everyone was worried about or the patient who crashed over night. As you work more and more in the field, you will come to value report, because it's knowledge shared with everyone.

Thanks for your responses!

I just have to add my 2 cents.

I work in an area where report is basically given over the patients head as we are connecting them to our monitors. I may get report from the anesthesia provider(depends on who it is, ranges from extensive excellent report all the way to no report). The circulating nurse also accompanies the patient to recovery and is supposed to give report(RN to RN). I have found that most of these nurses really have no idea of what is needed to convey. Many a time I have found out that the pt is a bilateral amputee or has COPD during my assessment(which usually comes several minutes after report and stabilizing them). I have had nurses "forget" to mention things like "The patients father tried to kill the mother and may try to see the child, but he has a restraining order....". So my point is that nothing can take the place of YOUR assessment. I have been surprised too many times by that colostomy or uriniary diversion that was under the covers, that no one thought to pass along! I give report every day to the floor nurses and I hope that Ia m thorough, and hope I don't miss anything vital. Always take the time to really LISTEN to report rather than writing useless info down. IV rates must be checked in the MAR anyway, so why write the rate down during report? Listen instead.

I generally agree. I want to know that their assessment is so when I assess I can note any changes from baseline.

Report would be a great assest if people would learn to cut out the garbage and give the true report. I don't need the whole kardex repeated to me, just give me the new and pertinent stuff!