LearningAboutNursing

Maybe create buckets for different patients based on their acuity levels. Start with the patients with highest acuity levels and consider all my expert nurses first for those patients (keeping in mind the ones that took care of the patient previously - if the patient has been there for couple of days). Continue in this order till I assign caregivers to all patients (keeping the patient to caregiver ratio in mind while assigning).

Thanks for all the great input. I really appreciate it. How does one ensure they are doing the best assignments? Say, a charge nurse has a list of caregivers that are working for the next shift and has a list of patients/beds that these caregivers need to care for. How would one go about doing the actual assignment? Pick the first patient and see which caregiver is best suited based on the patient acuity? Or group patients by acuity levels and then choose from the list of caregivers best suited for that acuity etc?

Please share your input/thoughts.

Discharge planning, remote monitoring, post discharge calls and visits etc are some of the few things that come up as part of my research. Different hospitals are doing it differently and seeing different impacts by utilizing some of the above mentioned improvements. However, statistics are usually based on overall readmission prevention improvement without clear information on which step reduced readmission by what percentage.

Thanks, that's very helpful. I had a few more questions - Does it ever happen that the patient needs to moved from one bed to another within the unit? If so, what happens to their assignment - does the nurse follow the patient? or a new nurse is assigned? What software are these assignments done in other than the printed assignment sheets? If there are systems where this is electronically done in and made visible at/near the nursing stations, does that remove the need for the assignment sheets?

I am wondering what hospitals are doing currently to reduce readmissions? How does one identify what is not working for their hospital/department/unit and leading to readmissions?

Thanks for the comments. In cases where the nurses are assigned to empty beds, how does one ensure that the nurse that was initially assigned to the empty bed is still the appropriate one based on the incoming patient's acuity? Does a CN need to constantly monitor for this? Are there cases where patient acuity levels change while the nurse is caring for the patient and because of the changes, the nurse is no longer the right one to care for the patient?

Hi, I am trying to understand how the nurse patient assignment works. Can you please shed some light on how the assignment process works? Are nurses assigned to empty beds - If known there is a patient that might come in or irrespective? Thanks in advance.