nerdynurse08

I'm in the process of finding a better system as well. I've looked into Kanban boards, Scrum boards, or similar systems for my office white board. I haven't found exactly what I want, but mostly because I'm too busy on all these dang projects!

I also have to say that I agree with the awkwardness when it concerns staff members friending each other. As a supervisor, I don't request to friend anyone but if someone friends me I will usually accept just so they don't feel awkward but to decrease the "need" to friend just to have a way to stay in touch, I did create a private facebook group for only our staff members (no families allowed). You can't find it if you search for it and a person can only join if they are added by a current staff member. All staff who leave are removed immediately. This allows staff to connect without feeling the pressure to add one another as friends. This way nurses can also coordinate trades, potlucks, share information, etc. I use it too for important and/or time sensitive announcements because I know the majority of the staff members don't check their email unless they are at work and sometimes there are things they need to know ahead of time. Edited to add: I only use social media for sharing pictures of my kids, so their grandparents can enjoy, and for animal memes. So I feel comfortable accepting friend requests from staff members to prevent the awkwardness.

I've had families find me and request to be my friend but I ignore or decline the request because we didn't have a close NICU relationship like the one I have with the family I mentioned above. I think if the connection is made AFTER discharge it is not a matter of professional or unprofessional (as long as the nurse uses social media responsibly).

While our hospital policy does not forbid the practice, I strongly caution against any of the nurses on my unit (I am a NICU supervisor) from friending families of current patients and I certainly never would. I don't have a problem with nurses who friend families after they discharge, however. Personally, I am only friends with one family. I was primary for one of their triplets who was eventually taken off of ventilator support and passed away.

Our Healthcare Assistants do not do patient care ever. Of course, even if our HCAs did, we would never let volunteers do medical tasks. They do a lot of stocking, laundry, putting together admit packets, emptying hampers, cleaning, etc.

If you have volunteers come to your NICU, what do you have them do? My hospital's volunteer services has 5-6 people who want to volunteer in our NICU (we already have 3-4 regular volunteers). (21 NICU beds, 8 step down bed unit). Right now, our volunteers spend a lot of time doing Healthcare Assistant (think CNA) tasks, while the HCAs hang out at the team center and surf the internet. The volunteers sometimes hold babies, especially NAS kiddos, but not a lot. They do our NICU laundry - baby clothes, etc. I would love to use volunteers as much as I can - who doesn't love free labor! I just want to be able to have something for them to do!