organdonor

Thanks, I really appreciate all of your responses. I find it interesting that we are dealing with the same struggles regardless of our regions. Our facility currently keeps a log of patient's bath/shower in addition to the documentation in the chart. It seems like the answer to every challenge has been to throw more documentation into the problem! I would like our facility to proact instead of react. Also does anyone have a copy of a good working kardex to share? We are not computerized and the current kardex in use is awful. Often times labs and tests are missed and I'm not surprised given the tools the nurses are working with.

Hi, I am brand new to rehab nursing management and new to this site! I am looking at a few things regarding our clinical practice at our rehab hospital and patient bathing is one of my top priorities. The health dept had a patient complaint about a year ago and I want to make sure that the problem is resolved. As a result, the supervisors keep a bath log but the process has not been improved. I haven't been able to find much data on the subject or in evidence-based practice and I am curious what other facilities are doing. Are your patients bathed daily or every other day? Is nursing or OT responsible? How is the workload divided up between the shifts and staff? I realize that there is a heavy workload placed on staff but it bothers me tremendously to discuss decreasing infection rates and hospital acquired infections, etc. when patients are receiving daily bathing. How can we assess our patients accurately for FIMS scoring and get them home to return to ADL's without daily bathing in rehab? I appreciate any insight you can offer to me before I address this in my new position. Currently patients are bathed every other day and OT is responsible for the first bath. I am very concerned because the documentation indicates that patients are not even getting a bath every other day after that! Incomplete documentation is in part the problem and unfortunately there are some accountability issues as well as turf war between nursing and therapy. I just want our patients to receive the care they deserve. I shower daily and I would hate to think that when I enter the hospital I would have to be on the every other day plan!