I hate incident reports!!!

Antikigirl, ASN, RN · Nov 7, 2004

Oh my gosh Blackcat99...you must work at my facility! LOL! We have to fill out an incident form for ANY skin probelm we see...I am serious, from a odd looking pimple, to a yellowed 1 cm bruise..oh excuse me ecchymosis (we can't say bruise..grrrrr!), to a

I had to fill out TWO today...we had a huge bazaar at our facility and a lady fainted from the crowd of folks (it was crowded and hot..even I got woosy just getting her out of there!). I had to do one on her, and the little old lady she grabbed and took down with her. No injury what so ever..and I have to form a careplan on how this will be prevented??? What, not let her go to crowded functions??? BROTHER!

Not only do we have to fill out the IR, but chart it in their charts, call family (technically yes...even a week old bruise of

Then I hear our State doesn't even like them, and says it is more of a facility deal for liablity. That the State would just like to see some notation in the charting and perhaps the MAR to make sure it is being assessed and followed up on till resolved! Oh brother!!!!!!

Average day 1-3 of these per shift! I was lucky..only 2 today! I spend all my time on these vs being available for my residents! I hate it!!!!!!!!! And most of this is absolutely not needed...and OH BOY docs do get mad if you are constantly faxing them about non injury falls, or small ecchymosis or skin tears that can be treated by nurses without MD orders!!!!!!! OH they get downright ticked! I get so embarrest faxing them on every little thing (my good friend, and my doc, gets 3 faxes from me at least a day...he gets really upset with me, but knows it is my facilities policy not mine!).

kar212 · Nov 7, 2004

Geez! Isn't it the truth that five minutes before you're ready to walk out the door, a patient will fall on the floor? I would always tell my patient, both in LTC and in the hospital, "You can't fall on the floor, it's too much paperwork". When I worked LTC, it seemed that we had to fill out an incident report every time a patient farted.

Where I work now, there are incident forms but we have another choice and that is to call a certain in-house hotline. All you do is give some patient info and describe the incident. It's great.

Blackcat99 · Nov 7, 2004

:angryfire Yes these incident reports are so time consuming. It usually takes me one hour to fill them out properly. One hour of paperwork usually for a non injury fall or minor skin problem. If I see "old bruises" I don't fill one out even though I am suppose to. I use to work at an Alzheimer's home but I had to quit because I usually had 3-4 incident reports every shift and got so sick and tired of spending so much time (overtime) at work. Being able to call someone on the phone and not having to do all that paperwork sounds great! I sure wish that option was available for me.

CapeCodMermaid, RN · Nov 7, 2004

Yikes....I hate to sound like management, but one day one of those incident reports might save your butt. We do investigations with statements of every fall, skin tear or bruise. We had 2 falls with fractures just before survey this year and we thought we would get slammed, but the surveyors looked at the investigations and were satisfied....especially important in the case of suspected or even hinted at abuse. Our old incident reports were close to 10 pages long....the new one is only one page!

Antikigirl, ASN, RN · Nov 8, 2004

OH I hear you about them saving your rear! There is a trend of lawyers to actually have their complaintants actually wait 7 years so that the nurses are either no longer available to counter, or they don't remember!!!! EEEEEKKKK! Seirously guys, new trend and one heck of a scary one!

I document the incident very well as is, and always put something on a MAR if there is any injury to check daily (with notification parameters for the nurse...we have caregivers doing most care). So these incident reports seem like I am just writing the same stuff again...but that is me, I tend to document very well. I do it with that mindset, 'does this paint a picture of what happened and what you did that will be clear to you in 7 years???" that gets me charting pretty well! This is all my state wants, they really do not like IR's...they find them a counterproductive crutch to just doing your implementations/plans/charting the way you are supose to...I can see that point too!

OH I SO WANT THAT HOTLINE!!!!!!! LOL!!!!!!

Today at work 5 IR's!!!!!!!!! UHGGGGGGGG!!!!!!

FZ1Tom · Nov 8, 2004

You could end up working in mental health. State of Misery has complete oversight. Sheriff, judge, jury, executioner, the whole works. Guilt utterly presumed and assumed.....it's a wonderful world.

I hate doing IR's too for such minor crap, but like someone else said - it can save your butt (fry it too). And let's not even get started on this one QMRP (shades of "does this patient belong in LTC") that I suspected threw away IR's by the scores. He didn't have to deal with the resident gone beserk and nearly killing everyone in the house ten times a day, after all......even GOD worked for him!:angryfire :angryfire :angryfire

Tom

Blackcat99 · Nov 8, 2004

Yes I understand the legal importance of writing incident reports but they take up so much time. All the other residents lose because the nurse is too busy filling out incident reports. Wouldn't it be great if they hired special "incident report" nurses to cover these things? They would sure be busy at my LTC. They could go from wing to wing filling out incident reports and they would be busy all shift.

CHATSDALE · Nov 8, 2004

our state requires that any altercation between residents must be faxed to state authorities in a 24 hour period...in a mental health facility that can mean frequest ir

plus the multiple page state report...