Reader's Digest article on nursing

zozzy777 · Jun 3, 2007

The sad thing is, it is not just night shift. How about weekends and holidays? Apparently, patients don't need the same care on weekends and holidays either. And that includes day shift.

GingerSue · Jun 3, 2007

yes, it's frightening and sad

so I checked a bit more, to find out about what happened to Lewis Blackman, who died after his surgery,

and the story fills me with questions:

http://www.lewisblackman.net/

was this an issue of staffing?

TigerGalLE, BSN, RN · Jun 3, 2007

What angers me about the article is that we need solutions. Why don't hospitals budget for more staffing? They want to increase patient satisfaction.. So we end up charting more, doing hourly rounds, filling out more papers..... Why not budget for more staffing? That will increase patient satisfaction.. that will SAVE LIVES...

It says the nurse took the blood pressure with multiple machines. They obviously should of done a manual. It is terrible what happened to this boy and to this family.

I am a new nurse and for the first few months I worked I was so discouraged... I couldn't provide the quality of care that I wanted to.. I had too many patients and not enough time to provide EXCELLENT care. It makes me so mad. Now I've learned to just do the best I can... Isn't it sad though? That we can't provide excellent care because we have too many patients?

JaneyW · Jun 3, 2007

This article also made me angry. I don't think it was just a matter of staffing. I work in a large teaching hospital and I can tell you that there is ALWAYS an attending available to call. The thought of not wanting to bother them or the lower resident being too scared of his chief resident to even call them really makes my blood boil. We are patient advocates and should be the ones to make those calls--no matter what time of day or night or day of the week. It is so sad that this happened. I just can't understand how they could have waffled about the call for so long when all signs were bad and trending worse.

TigerGalLE, BSN, RN · Jun 3, 2007

I completely agree with you Janey... It makes no sense why this boy suffered the way he did. Even when unable to obtain a BP .. they still didn't call! I mean his HR was 147!! how can you not think something is wrong at that point? I just don't get it.. I don't think staffing was an issue in his case...

SharonH, RN · Jun 3, 2007

http://www.rd.com/content/night-shift-nightmare/
What do y'all think about this? Makes a good point I guess, but this article made me angry when I read it.

The guy who wrote the article doesn't get it. He attributes what happened to this young man was because of night shift staffing. That's silly and his article doesn't support it. The article also discounts the value of experienced and knowledgeable nursing care as the fault of the nurses seems to be solely that they did not call a more experienced doctor. After the Toradol, the first thing that went wrong was that this young man was admitted to an oncology floor instead of surgery. I believe that this was probably the most significant mistake leading to this young man's death. I think that an experienced surgical nurse would have caught on to what was happening with this young man sooner, both by assessment and by questioning the lack of post-op CBC and the poor pain control. This is not to question the skills of oncology nurses but a nurse is a nurse is a nurse -not true. A nurse who was experienced with this type of postop patient may have saved this young man's life but the writer of the article as well as the parents of the patient do not know that.

Babarnurse · Jun 4, 2007

I think there were several issues that contributed to his death; all of which were preventable. I think the nurses missed some very important signs. Very sad story

GilaRRT · Jun 4, 2007

Some pretty poor excuses in my humble opinion. Is this an actual trend among nurses? How hard is it to pick up the phone and get the doc out of bed. Nearly all of the nurses I have worked with had no problems calling at 2 am. Come to think of it, many enjoyed making the call. (Physician dependant of course. The ones with the poorest attitudes were the most fun to awaken.)

I also think the article misses some vital points. Many factors led to the patients death. Simply blaming the night shift is a pretty poor excuse. Nights may in fact be one of the many factors; however, many things led to this disaster. While the author does in fact touch on some of the other factors, I can see how a lay person could simly conclude something different.

Nursonegreat · Jun 4, 2007

Did anyone see how he had to go to a childrens cancer floor cause there were no surgical beds available. common thing i know...and not an excuse by any means....but these nurses take care of cancer pts and prob dont see a high percent of surgical pts. if u dont use it u lose it. altho it seems like the things that went wrong should have sent off all kinds of internal alarms...i dont know....but it makes me so sad for the family left having to miss the prro kid for the rest of their lives.

Jolie, BSN · Jun 4, 2007

One statement in the article that particularly concerns me is that one of the "corrective actions" taken by the hospital was to implement a computerized staffing program that allows administration to allocate nurses to the units where they are needed the most.

First of all, no experienced healthcare administrator NEEDS a computer program to tell him where nurses are needed. ALL patients need adequate amounts of nursing time. This statement leads me to believe that they are simply shuffling the deck chairs, and sending nurses to the higher acuity units, not hiring and staffing ALL units adequately. It also sounds like the old addage "A nurse is a nurse," making me suspicious that they will be floating staff to high acuity units, not staffing units with nurses trained to each specialty.

TigerGalLE, BSN, RN · Jun 4, 2007

What happened to Lewis Blackman was horrible. But I feel like the article made it seem like that is how night shift is everywhere all the time. I don't work nights, but I know that the nurses on my floor are very good and work very hard. Also like someone else pointed out.. I don't think night shift even had anything to do with this case.