Isolation patients

[rebecca41]

How does everyone handle isolation patients in the PACU setting?

If you have only bays, do you just pull a cart over to the end of the bed? Do you really gown up and down as you step pass that imaginary line?

If you have rooms or a room dedicated to an iso patient, where is your computer? We have COWs and right now we're wheeling it to the room doorway but not bringing it inside. Every time we need to chart something we're supposed to de-gown, step out and chart, then gown back up to go in. It's not efficient whatsoever, or it means you're trying to chart mostly everything after your patient has gone which is also not ideal. Given the short amount of time that we have a PACU patient (as opposed to an inpatient), not sure why there isn't a computer in the room and just clean it after they leave.

Thanks for input. Trying to argue for a change to our current practice.

[Rose_Queen, BSN, MSN, RN]

Two isolation rooms, each with a wall mounted computer. Keyboard is waterproof and can be wiped with our low level disinfectant wipes. When patient is first brought to PACU, the primary nurse is outside the room and gets report while a secondary nurse and patient care tech get the patient hooked up to monitors and such.

[rebecca41]

That makes sense. Going to see if we can make some changes. Seems counterintuitive to me that as PACU nurses we're supposed to be at the patient's bedside doing real-time charting for the time they're with us but the computer is outside.

[djmatte, ADN, MSN, RN, NP]

As noted above. We always had of our two isolation rooms that were pressurized if needed.