LewisA2

Many patients in ICU are here for an extended period of time. The worst thing that can happen is reporting to work finding out that you get to transfer the patient to another facility, you have never taken care of the patient until today, and they have been there 28 days! I know all of the details can be found in progress notes and charting, but it seems like there should be a faster way of communicating the history of the hospital stay. Some of our nurses will take a plain piece of paper and write the date and reason for admit, then each day following write down briefly the major events that took place that day (i.e. pt exubated today, CRRT initiated or dc'd, Levo started etc..) It is so helpful to have this "story" to take a quick glance at, especially if the hospital stay is a lengthy one. It doesnt need to be a permanent part of the medical record or a hospital wide form, just something we can have available as a courtesy to each other to make the patients hospital stay history easily accessible without having to dig through weeks of charting. Do any other units have anything like this? I am looking for ideas on how to propose that we implement this type of communication within our unit, and I would like input or examples used by other facilities. Anyone who can contribute any information I would greatly appreciate!