State Surveyors Are Here...What Do You Do?

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  1. State Surveyors Are Here...What Do You Do?

    • 28
      Proceed to Work As Normal
    • 0
      Panic and Stay Home for One Day
    • 2
      Panic and Stay Home for the Rest of the Week

30 members have participated

Specializes in Geriatrics w/rehab, LTC, hospice patient.

So, you get to work in the morning, not only to find out that you are short a nurse, and you'll be expected to cover an entire floor on your own, but there's another surprise--state surveyors are there today! It's making you sick just thinking about it, and making you nauseous, but you're probably anxious and not necessarily physically ill. In the heat of the moment, which option do you choose?

A. Go to work anyway since you are already there. Pretend you didn't see the sign stating that state surveyors are there and go about your job the way you normally would during other times you've been short-staffed. You have, after all, managed to take care of an entire wing before.

B. Panic, and leave work before taking report on any patients, reporting sudden illness. However, you are scheduled to work the next day, so you show up, taking the chance that state surveyors completed their assessment in one day.

C. Panic, leave work, and report sudden illness. Call in for the next day because there's a good chance that state surveyors will be there tomorrow, too. You have to look out for yourself before anyone else.

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Take a breath, and go do your job. Of course, get any tube feeds done before they come on your wing and remember hand hygiene.

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Specializes in critical care, ER,ICU, CVSURG, CCU.

Proceed with good practice

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Wash my hands a lot

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Isolation rooms are suddenly the place to be ;)

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Take a breath, and go do your job. Of course, get any tube feeds done before they come on your wing and remember hand hygiene.

Why tube feeds specifically?

Just curious.

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Why tube feeds specifically?

Just curious.

Well, giving medications and bolus feedings through the tube is rather cumbersome and time consuming. So I used to go do those before the surveyors hit the floor if possible so I didn't feel like I had to rush through them.

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Seems to me that if the facility is short a nurse when state surveyors are there, then the management has to cover it somehow. That is not for you to cover. I would refuse to do it. You have to protect your license.

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Specializes in Adult and Pediatric Vascular Access, Paramedic.

Hide in a closet anytime you see suits coming down the hall!

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Specializes in Critical Care and ED.

#1. Get off your phone. :D

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Just suck it up and do it. If your facility is that short when state is there, I can't imagine how it is on a daily basis. Whatever mistakes they find aren't your problem for the most part anyway. The surveyors aren't going to pull your license because of the state of your facility.

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Specializes in Critical Care.

Surveyors aren't there to evaluate whether you should have a license or not, they are there to determine if the people who run your facility are competent at doing that, if they aren't then there's no reason to feel like you need to obscure that fact.

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