Seen it? Fixed it?

[loaparker]

Would love to hear some stories about how you nurses have seen something that 'was not quite right' and went about fixing it on your wards-- maybe with evidence based practice.

I am a new nurse in ICU and coming from an engineering background this really interests me, but have not found many threads on it. Would love to hear your !

[RN1989]

There probably is not much on this topic because it does not happen very often compared to how many nurses work on a day to day basis. Nurses frequently just do not have the time to try to "fix" things, thus they plod on through the chaos just trying to get the meds and labs done on time. Most employers make it very difficult to fix things, in fact, most employers deny that anything is broken to start with.

[TheCommuter, BSN, RN]

I'll shamefully admit that I'm too tired, busy, overwhelmed, anxious, occupied, overworked, indifferent, and frequently interrupted to even have the time to go about fixing things that do not appear to be quite 'right.' I'm being pulled in too many directions at once from needy patients, abusive family members, displeased managers, and other impatient people.

As a bedside nurse, there's rarely any time for me to worry about fixing major flaws. My concerns are more concrete (getting through the shift, for example). That's my cold, harsh reality and $0.02 for the day.

[XB9S, BSN, MSN, EdD, RN, APN]

I have one. When I started in my current job as a nurse practitioner 4 years ago I was very frustrated with the numbers of patients that were being cancelled either the day before or day of surgery because they were found to be not fit. It could have been something as simple as blood pressure management but the anaethatists would send them home wasting theatre time, surgeons time etc etc. Because of this I pushed to set up a pre-operative assessment unit where all elective surgical pateints came 6 weeks pre-op for a health assessment to optimise prior to surgery.

in 2006 I was given the go ahead to recruit and move into a purpose built unit which is now really successful and our cancellation rate is now almost non-exsistant.