rrroyer

Our system is set up differently. Our meds don't count as given until we file them. So we educated nurses not to file until the med is swallowed or administered. This gives them the opportunity to "undo" anymed that is rejected by the patient or spit out. We have an admin comment to document reasons for lateness. Unlimited characters. We have set the late time as 60 minutes after med due for nursing and 120 minutes for respiratory. However there are often reasons to excede this as patients are often of the floor. So we monitor for trends from staff members and work to adjust our admin times.

We allow nurse to document and do BMV with EMAR. The instructor has to send in a form for each clinical student about 2 weeks prior to clinicals. We use the first day of clinicals teaching them documentation and BMV. The student nurse has the same access as a licensed nurse except their meds and documentation requires cosigning by instructor or nurse.

We just recently implemented Meditech BMV in our hospital of 240 beds. We had piloted for 7 months on 2 units to work out the kinks and had a 2 week support period. It has been remarkably well received by all the Physicians, Nurses respiratory therapists and patients. Much of the factors to success include doing the research and avoiding the pitfalls. We have a special character on the armband that differentiates it from other patient bar code labels. Test all drugs and make sure your bar code reader can read them all. Spend on a quality scanner. We use a Symbol DS6708 reads every bar code practically all the time. Make sure the cart is user friendly and will not run out of battery life and you have excellent wireless coverage in all rooms. Include the staff from Medical, Nursing, Respiratory and Pharmacy in the decision and make sure you have strong administrative backing. Use reporting to demonstrate the success and the number of prevented errors. Have a good training program and practice sessions available to staff and things should go well. Best of luck to everyone working on improving patient safety in the hospitals.

Ahh You must be using the same physicians as we are. LOL

I don't really expect increased infection rates. Based on what literature I received from the Kendall rep I expect decreased rates. However the physicians must have stock in Bard and swear that our infection rate will go up. The nurses like the new catheter tray, They like the no latex aspect, and with the cost being so much lower I'm sure we will have to change. We also have to win over the physicians however.

Hi all. In our facility we are considering changing from a Bard Latex IC foley catheter to a Kendall 100% silicone latex catheter setup. I was wondering if any one has any experience with problems using the 100% silicone catheters. Primarily looking at increased infection rates so I thought this would be the group to ask. I case it makes a difference the kendall product would be about 40% cheaper. So administration is on me to approve this change. However the physicians are reluctant. So any material you could refer me to one way or the other would help.

I'm the manager of a 20 bed ortho/neuro unit and a 29 bed medical/surgery unit. My questions is what are the productive hours per patient day alotted to various units/hospitals across the nation. We just had consultants come and evaluate our productivity. They then suggested lowering our productivity based on "national benchmarks" so I was wanting to compare the real world numbers. Gather my ammunition. ANy help would be appreciated.