Passing things on

Nurses General Nursing

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I have a question for your all. How do you feel when a nurse from the previous shift passes something on to you? I work 3P-11P and there are times when something could not get done during the day shift....or maybe the nurse simply forgot to do it. I don't know if it is because I am a new nurse...but I am happy to do whatever it is that needs to be done. I find that the night nurses tend to get a little perturbed when something is passed to them. Is it because patients should be sleeping at night? It isn't like the nurse has to give meds every hour of the night and doesn't have time. I've reviewed the eMar for some of my patients and see that the nurse doesn't have to give meds until 0600 sometimes. I work at an LTAC and alot of our patients can't do for themselves and need incontinent care and turning...and all that jazz.

But, I thought that we are all part of the same team. Why the rolled eyes and attitudes when something gets passed on?

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Specializes in Gerontology.

I think a lot of it depends on why things are being passed on.

A blood transfusion left for the next shift because it took several attempts to get IV access or the blood was difficult to match? OK

a blood transfusion left for the next shift because the nurse doesn't like giving blood? Not OK.

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The rolling of eyes and attitude has been and will be going on for every shift....day shift rolling their eyes at what 11 - 7 didn't get done.....3 - 11 shift rolling their eyes at what 7 - 3 didn't get done....etc.

You sound like a good nurse, I feel certian you do everything you can during your shift. Do some soul searching....think if there is some things, some way, you could do anything different, some routine tasks that you frequently are unable to get done etc.

However most of the time the honest answer is no...you are efficient and work hard. So just forgive and forget the eye rollers, they are probably not looking forward to their 11 - 7 shift and would roll their eyes at Florence Nightingale and Mother Teresa. (I say this as a 17 year night shift worker, however I was never an eye roller.)

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Specializes in ICU.

24hr care people. I think meds should all be given on time, and dressings should be done on the day/afternoon shift so I'm not waking the pt up in the middle of the night for a dressing change. Everything else, it doesn't bother me what is left to do on my shift.

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Specializes in Med/surg, Tele, educator, FNP.

When I work on the floor I remember to always be courteous, night shift leaves things for day shift and instead of them telling me " I can stay over and do it", I say "no it's ok I got it". Then guess what a few weeks fast forward giving report to the same nurse but I forgot to do something. That nurse says the same back to me, "don't worry I got it". 9/10 times it always works out for me. Never ever had a problem, but it can happen. Let it roll off your shoulders if you did the best you could.

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We have a few nurses that get huffy on both shifts if something isn't done, even with a legitimate reason. I don't mind passing something on with good reason and I don't mind getting something passed to me as long as the nurse says "hey it was really crazy and we just didn't get to this." If it was passing on reporting to the dr, I refuse to,accept that responsibility since it is a new patient. In fact I stayed late this morning to call 2 doctors with findings on my shift. I think either way, show professional courtesy and it will go a long way!

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Specializes in Acute Care - Adult, Med Surg, Neuro.

I would say it depends on what is getting passed on as an OP stated. I've had a blood transfusion passed on to me and I was NOT happy. I have also had a number of enemas passed to me and also was NOT happy. However, if you meant to call a doctor to get Senna ordered and didn't get around to it, I'll gladly do that. Sometimes I know that the nurse has had a bad day and has left some things for me and I will be forgiving, we've all been there. But I believe it's all about priorities.

As someone who's worked off shifts (evening and nights), I can also tell you that there are things that just can't get done on off-shifts. At 5 or 6pm the patient's regular doctors leave and there is often one or two on-call doctors for the entire hospital. On night shift it's even worse. Let's not even talk about the coverage for specialties. They don't know the patient's history and are often hesitant to order things unless it is simple or an emergency. Many of the testing staff have left. Our staffing is often slashed in half, with no PCA or unit secretary. We get slammed with admissions. It's just logistically hard to get things done on off shifts, particularly nights.

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Specializes in Critical Care, Postpartum.

I'm a new nurse on my unit. Sometimes there's not enough time during the shift to get to everything. I work day shift and there are certain things I never (or try hard not to) pass on to the night shift to deal with. One being pain medications to new admits who are in need of it. Getting hold of on-call night doctors are difficult and my priority is the patient. The patient's BP may increase due to the pain and it's not fair to the night shift nurse to try to deal with a patient who's in serious pain with an elevated BP and desperately trying to get in touch with the doctor. Also there are times when I get a new admit 15-30 minutes before change of shift. I make sure to get a set of vitals, administer meds including setting up any IV fluids. Many of them appreciate me doing that much for them.

But, I get left things from night shift that must be done on my shift that I don't appreciate. For example, the patient is a hard stick and the nurse couldn't draw the labs. Per protocol the nurse is to put in a hard stick order and get someone from lab to come up and get the blood. Does that get done? No, they leave it for the day shift. *eyes roll*

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Speaking from a night perspective I usually don't mind doing certain things. If you didn't get to a dressing and the patient tends to be awake at night, no biggie. But if patient is a good sleeper and I never wake her up for anything yeah I'm gonna be peeved. Also annoying for nights to have to call doctors for things that should've been taken care of during business hours.

Also unless its a dire emergency don't pass on critical stuff...if you made a med error at the end of your shift, you deal with it for example.

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Specializes in Anesthesia, ICU, PCU.

This is a gray area for me right now. I'm a new nurse on nights and just yesterday I had one of the busiest shifts because of stuff done/not done by day shift. One or two things here and there are okay, but I'm still a noob so I can only handle so much! I admit that my skills are still growing and this was a factor in making my night busy, but a new nurse receiving an assignment (from another new nurse) that needs much more than everyday catchup can be overwhelming. My patients were stable, but the remaining tasks from the previous night + my own got to be too much.

The one patient I got seemed to have been harmed more than helped. I walked into the room to see that I had maybe 20 minutes of levophed left with no backup in the med room (I always make sure there's a new or extra vaso gtt bag for the next nurse, this is just common courtesy) so that's a trip to pharmacy. She fell at the beginning of the day (while the day team was shorthanded) and had a couple of scrapes and bruises nothing serious, but quite noticeable and definitely document-worthy. They were neither treated nor documented. This is a liver patient we're talking about here with a PTT in the 50s and an INR above 2.0 c'mon man! I had to take her down for the X-ray of her LS spine that was still pending to r/o injury (the fall was at ~0900 and I was taking her at 2100). There was a unit of blood pending to be transfused from 0838 for a Hb of 6.6 (pt. wasn't symptomatic, but I would still prioritize blood transfusions pretty highly). Her NGT was clotted and they didn't want to replace it 2/2 her coags being elevated, so I had to embark on the next to impossible task of "bribing" a very confused/picky patient to take her medication PO.

My current impression of nursing: it really is an unpredictable job. I feel like you'd be making a mistake to expect your day to go any certain way. Anything can change at any time and you really have to stay on your toes at all times.

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I have worked all the eight hour shifts and find that 3-11 gets a disproportionate share of things passed along to them as well as the majority of admissions.

Now that I work 12 hour day shifts, I find that I push through the first busy hours and the 3-7 hours are used to catch up on things that got pushed off until later.

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Specializes in Med Surg.

For me it depends on who the nurse is. There are some nurses who almost never pass anything on, so when they say they're leaving something for me, I have no problem doing it. Then there are those who frequently leave things. I try not to get huffy, but it's irritating when the same people leave things weekly. This is a 24 hour job, but there's the basic task of just doing one's job.

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