Starting on a brand new unit

[freckles23]

So my small tele unit (17 patients) just moved to a brand new cardiac floor (38 patients) that was built In our hospital and it is supposed to be majority tele and then 9 cardiac stepdown unit beds (TAVR patients). They hired a whole bunch of new grad nurses and then there are those of us that transferred over. We basically have new nurses training newer nurses which is very scary to think about. I have 5 years experience as an RN but still find myself asking millions of questions a day.

Anyways, we are starting this new unit from scratch, all new management and there are so many things that has gone wrong such as figuring out how to properly staff the unit and how to assign which patients to who. There are so many things missing on the unit as far as equipment or minor inconveniences. I know it will take time but I feel like they rushed to open this unit and they really should have had nursing staff view the floor to give their input which would have helped the now minor inconveniences and I feel like we need a nurses touch to be like this should be added/removed. Management is open to our suggestions and we are all excited for this unit. But even management doesnt know how to go about alot of the problems we have encountered. Has anyone started on a brand new unit and what was the outcome? Im excited and I know kinks need to be worked out and im trying to think if the kinks are something that could have been resolved if it was planned out better before moving there or if its easier to have trial and error while in action on the unit. It is cool because we can add our touch on things and ideas will be nurse driven and it makes me want to get involved more and im excited to learn more.

i do feel like there wasnt adequate training given to us to care for stepdown patients. They gave us some online modules to go over and to shadow in cpacu and cvicu but we didnt see much in there. So now these patients are coming to the unit and im clueless. I know it takes some understanding on my part to dedicate time as well. I just dont like that I feel we are blinded into what kinds of patients we can accept, what procedures, drips, protocols (since there really are none in place). Curious of other peoples opinions, ideas, thoughts, suggestions.

[Wuzzie]

Could they have some of the CVICU nurses buddy with you guys for a month or so? Or have their clinical educator be with you on the floor?

[Jedrnurse, BSN, RN]

They opened without their medical/nursing care policies in place??

Oh, so not good...

Would it be worth it to you to volunteer to participate on a policy committee? That way you could get some input on the "ground floor".

[freckles23]

8 hours ago, Jedrnurse said:

They opened without their medical/nursing care policies in place??

Oh, so not good...

Would it be worth it to you to volunteer to participate on a policy committee? That way you could get some input on the "ground floor".

I would def like to! And the policies are iffy. Like we opened for a certain patient population but are taking patients beyond the expectations of the unit so its hard to tell exactly what the expectation is

9 hours ago, Wuzzie said:

Could they have some of the CVICU nurses buddy with you guys for a month or so? Or have their clinical educator be with you on the floor?

I work nights so alot of the management is on day shift. We do have an on source person but shes been searching for answers as well. We have a unit educator but shes getting acclimated herself. Sure we can ask cvicu or cpacu but it still differs from our unit. I guess itll be a learning process