eernuts

We have a problem with surgeons bringing all of their patients into outpatient waiting all at the same time even though they may not be scheduled until hours later. They do this so they can continue to work if a patient cancels. I understand why but the patients get understandably irate. I would like to start a program where we tell patients to come in 1 1/2 hrs prior to their surgery however stay by the phone should a cancellation occur and we would need them to come in earlier. Does anyone have a program like that now? Thanks!!!

In my institution, the lab does the therapeutic phlebotomy and my nurses who work in pre-admission testing (of all places) monitor the patient. I want my PAT nurses doing PAT work. Forgive my ignorance, but does a nurse have to be present for therapeutic phlebo?

It does seem excessive. What have you seen more of? Charge nurses or Assistant Nurse Managers?

Do you have both charge nurses and assistant nurse managers in your nursing unit?

We are trying to write a policy about patient/family or others abuse/violence against nurses. We have a policy but we don't have an official procedure (step #1, Step #2 etc...). Once we have talked to the aggressor and it doesn't get better, we administratively discharge them or ban them from the campus in the case of a visitor. I think we need something a little more definitive. Does anyone have a policy that you could talk about or share in terms of this topic? Thanks!

All, The supervisor job is the toughest in the house. Where I work, the supervisor is compensated at the same rate a nurse manager is. My problem is I'm having a tough time attracting people to the supervisor position because of the hours. What other things would attract you to this job, knowing that the pay and benes are the same? I'm open to any suggestion. Thanks!

Thanks to all for your responses. We have selected a bed flow coordinator (he was formerly a house supervisor). He will decide what patient gets what bed and expedite transfers and discharges. We are still trying to decide between a staffing clerk or a nurse(I should have said that this clerk is not just a clerk, this is someone who has worked on nursing units for years). We also have nurses manning a referral center. I think this set up is going to work great. I'll let you know the outcome. P.S Mydesygn, this isn't to save money, actually we have had to add an fte. This is about being able to accomodate our ever growing patient population, especially those patients who are waiting in the ED for treatment and help our referral hospitals get patients in here. Thanks again!!!!

Thanks for the tips! We haven't decided on equipment yet, I have quotes and we are going to evaluate. Do you know what is most commonly used? We are in Huntington.

We have used two different companies to do our inpatient dialysis and neither one has been satisfactory. We have done a cost and quality analysis and have decided we would like to start our own inpatient dialysis. We are researching every avenue on how we proceed on starting a unit up. Does anyone have any advice or resources that we can use? Thanks!

We currently have a nurse supervisor for all shifts. What we are going to try is making the day supervisor become a bed flow coordinator (they do nothing but work on patient flow and bed management)and add a staffing clerk to work on the staffing issues with nurse managers M-F. We will have nurse supervisors from 4P-12Aand 12-8P and 24 hours on the weekend. Has anyone else tried something similar?