how long before taking off orders

Nurses Medications

Published

Specializes in Corrections, Psych, LTC, Management.

I am trying to find if there is an official rule as to how soon after the order is written it should be carried out / noted. At my old facility stat was obviously stat and not longer than 30 mins , all other orders usually within 2 hours, just wandering if there is an official tinme frame. Im working as a manager in a new facility and second shift seems to be leaving everything for night shift so I am trying to come up with an universal policy.

Thank everyone

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Specializes in Corrections, Psych, LTC, Management.

Anyone?!

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Specializes in Critical Care.

If you take into account the reality of patient care, then you realize a "universal rule" isn't possible. It's all about prioritization. There are times when an order should be entered/carried out within 30 minutes (even a non-stat order) based on the overall workload of staff, and times when it's just as appropriate for it to wait until the next shift; sometimes there are other things that legitimately comes first, sometimes those things can saturate even hours worth of time and ignoring those to enter orders might be just as incompetent as not doing so in other situations.

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Specializes in Med/Surg, Academics.

Back up a little. Before you come up with an order policy to "solve the problem," you need to find out why stuff is being passed on to night shift. Root cause analysis should be the first step in formulating any policy designed to fix a problem.

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Specializes in Corrections, Psych, LTC, Management.

"we got busy" is usually why the stuff is being passed on. when i know they werent THAT busy. Thats why I wanted to implement a rule of thumb. Obviously I will not be counting to a minute but I just wanted an idea if there is somewhat official rule out there. For my other jobs it was you carry them out unless you are slammed with admissions or codes.

but thanks for the input

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Specializes in Hospice / Psych / RNAC.

Check your facilities p/p.

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Specializes in Corrections, Psych, LTC, Management.

nothing specific in them, that was the first place i looked.

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Specializes in Surgical, quality,management.

You are doing what all nurses tend to do and look for an obvious solution. However as a manager you need to do, in this case MUST do a RCA or a 5 why analysis. Ask why are the nurses too busy, why they were doing X that made them too busy, was it a nursing duty? Etc drill right down in into the problem. There is a great example of using the 5 why with the Washington Monument .

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