judyd119

I am a Director of Nursing myself in a SNF. In my opinion this is nonsense. Is your DON new? First of all, it is nearly impossible for an 11-7 shift to do this because of the limited # of staff available. But most importantly it is unfair to the residents. Waking them up to be toileted q2h throughout the night, when most of them don't even know what's going on is only disrupting their sleep. I'm wondering if you are seeing more behavior problems during the day. My suggestion is to have the staff request a meeting with the DON and respectfully voice their opinions. Not only is it a DON's job to ensure all residents are taken care of medically, socially and psychologically but she also has a responsibility to her staff. I've learned along the way that the front-line staff that are doing the job usually come up with way to do their jobs easier and still get the required results. Please mention to her that this practice is disruptive to the resident's sleep and can lead to behavioral problems due to lack of sufficient sleep/rest. But remember, all incontinent residents must be checked q2h and prn and incontinence care given if needed--however, this is less disruptive than getting them completely out of bed, especially with a lift and trying to toilet them. A lot of resident's still remain asleep during care. Hope this helps.

We take a full set of vital signs on admission, prn and monthly. If they are on Medicare part A, we take them q shift until they are discharged from Part A. We take Temps q shift on everyone on an antibiotic and BP's q week on everyone that has HTN. We also take a full set of vitals if they have had an accident/incident for 72 hours. Hope this helps! Can't imagine having to have full v/s's on every resident every day. They're not in a hospital, they're at home.