Policies & Procedures

[Medic2RN, BSN, RN, EMT-P]

While working yesterday, I had two situations arise in which I needed to look into my hospital's and my unit's policies and procedures to know what action to take.

Talk about fighting a losing battle. I couldn't find anything at all. There are books scattered throughout the unit and none of them are in any type of order to easily find information. I couldn't get in touch with the educator or direct management. I had to decide what to do based upon the experience and wisdom of the charge RN. It's not that I don't trust her, but I like to see the policies in black and white. I learn that way.

Has anyone else experienced this? I've seen several posts on this site where the advice was to 'check your policies', I've tried to find them and it scares me that I can't. I've even enlisted the help of other nurses to find things in the policy books with no luck.

It's crazy, I can readily find the hourly rounding logs, but can't find supposed policy changes that have recently (per rumor) been implemented.

Ugh!

[loriangel14, RN]

That sounds frustrating. Ours are

on the computer so looking them up is fairly easy.We also have them all together in a binder.

[Simplepleasures]

Our policy and procedure manuals were locked up in the DONs office. When she wasnt there on PMs or nights and the supervisor was out of the office , there was no access to them, crazy.

[rn/writer, RN]

Do you have a nurse educator you can turn to? Does your facility used shared governance? If so, there should be a divisions that could speak to this need. Quality and Staff Development come to mind. How about bringing this up at a unit meeting. This is too important a resource to be without. You shouldn't have to just "wing it" when you have a question. How are you supposed to follow P&P if you can't even find it!

[Medic2RN, BSN, RN, EMT-P]

How are you supposed to follow P&P if you can't even find it!

Exactly my point. Couldn't find the educator at that time. I will follow up on it because it's too important....well, I guess only to me!

[UM Review RN, ASN, RN]

I have to devote at least a half an hour to finding any P&P, even though they're all on the computer. Reason? They're just slopped in there willy-nilly.

I still haven't found a job description for PCTs that tells me what skills they can and cannot do.

It's like all the P&P's are just stuffed into some Internet closet and no one has the gumption to get in there and clean it up. Just makes me want to :scrm:

[fultzymom]

We have P & P books at every nurses station in our facility. They used to be in the DON's office but like someone else said, that is no good for evening/nights/weekends. So after much complaining about it, we got them moved out to where they need to be. It was beyond me why we ever had to ask in the first place. Seems like that problem is more places than just mine though. My advice is to not give up until they get where they need be.

[Love_2_Learn]

Our policy & procedure manuals are in our computers but are often difficult to find as well. This is because we have policies that are hospital-wide nursing policies and then there are some department-specific ones. Half the time that area of the computer is "down" and the policies are simply not available even if I have time to hunt for it. (Now that they are on the computer we are not allowed to have back-up printed copies in the hospital anymore.) My main complaint is that when I need to see a policy I generally don't have 30 minutes to spend hunting for it! After all, every one of us is busy a bee these days! Aaaarrrrrrggggghhhhh! I long for the days when our P&P manuals were in the unit and were just the ones we needed for our area. I apologize for the rant but this topic is a touchy one for me!

[Agnus]

Have you written up this concern? It really needs to be.

[Love_2_Learn]

Yes I have Angus. The responses are "We are working on it." meaning they are trying to work the bugs out of the computer system. It's like the proverbial brick wall... Big sigh.