Sassafras

I'm a Periop manager and I'm utterly astonished as to how 4 nurse pre-op and recovered 25 patients. My nurses would have none of that. I don't know the acuity level of course but our ratios wouldn't allow for that number of nurses. Your nurse manager is out of line. Have you raised your concerns to the direct or on an employee surgery. My charges have to go in staffing a lot with us being short staffed, but then again I am too. As far as her schedule is she getting in her 40? Sometimes I think staff that work 3 x 12 hour shifts perceive me going home early when really I'm doing a 9-10 because I'm there 5 days a week. I never work from home though, unless it's the weekend!

Our phase II nurses will stay their entire shift if there are patients left to be discharged, meaning they don’t go home early. That being said, I do not expect them to stay late and accrue overtime for late patients. PACU takes over when their shift ends because we are staffed 24/7. On the flip side of that, our pre-op does take back up call to our PACU nurses. Theoretically, we could call them back in, but only if we needed additional help. It’s hard for some people to understand the flow of PACU unless they have worked it. You could be completely dead one minute and slammed the next. We have no control of how long surgeries run and the arrival of our patients. Overextending ourselves to absorb phase II patients is not always possible depending on what’s on the table in the back.

Hello PACU nurses, I just wanted to reach out and see if any of you had experienced a workflow that included all ICU/PCU patient’s coming to PACU to preop. We had a leadership change and the concern brought forward was that critical care patients were coming from a higher level of care to a lower level of care when in preop. Within our facility preop is considered outpatient/medsug level. I am not referring to weekend or night emergency cases, but rather scheduled Monday through Friday cases. I am the Daytime PACU charge and I am having an incredibly hard time managing the flow of fresh recoveries and critical care preop patients in one 8 bay PACU with limited nursing staff. Has anyone seen this work successfully? Do you have any advice or tips? I am feeling very overwhelmed as these patients have multiple issues and are not properly optimized for surgery in the ICU or consented for anesthesia. Please make note, per ASPAN standard we do not have the same nurse doing preop and recovery at the same time. Also, the eventual goal of the department is to have a preop holding area to decompress inpatients from PACU and outpatient preop. I appreciate any and all feedback.