Hi, was just wanting to get someone's opinion about a bullitin board that was just set up on my unit. I work on a Neuro ICU floor of 33 beds. For this year we have been working to get our BSI, UTI, and VAP numbers down. The numbers are low but we are striveing for 0. When I mean low, we will have 1 UTI or 1 VAP for the month. Our manager and head physician have come together and developed this new bullitin board labeled Quality Compliance. On it is the name of every nurse that is employeed on our unit, along with every month of the year. I questioned what this was for and was told that they are planning on posting next to each employee how many infections they were "responible" for in that month. When I mean responisble, they research every infection. Say, if you inserted a foley and 2-3 or so days later they come down with a UTI then they pin the infection on you or, if the UTI was out of the 2-3 day window of insertion they look at when the pt was cultured positive, and they look at the nurses careing for the pt before the date of positive cultures close to that date. The same goes for the VAPs and BSIs. I understand that a no infection rate is extremely important but this is way over the top. HOW is this to boost moral? Also, being able to pin the infection exactly on one person is hard and inaccurate! Can this bullitin board be a form of slander?
I think it's completely unnprofessional and uncalled for. Also, there is really no way to know what nurse or if any nurse is responsibe for the infections. There is nothing positive that comes out of this. They are playing staff against one another, this is bad for morale, not based on any concrete evidence, etc.
I would have an open talk with management about this and express your concerns. If you aren't diligent in your job that is a personal issue and should be discussed privately. It's a really immature way to handle with this issue. And I would bring up that patients, spouses, etc. can also add to infection. Are they going to track that too? How idiotic.
Batman25
686 Posts
I think it's completely unnprofessional and uncalled for. Also, there is really no way to know what nurse or if any nurse is responsibe for the infections. There is nothing positive that comes out of this. They are playing staff against one another, this is bad for morale, not based on any concrete evidence, etc.
I would have an open talk with management about this and express your concerns. If you aren't diligent in your job that is a personal issue and should be discussed privately. It's a really immature way to handle with this issue. And I would bring up that patients, spouses, etc. can also add to infection. Are they going to track that too? How idiotic.