Has anyone else had this happen? Quite a few times now, when it is approaching the end of my shift and I am closing out charts, a new admit will come up right as I am giving report to the next nurse. I will take report on the new admission, get vital signs, and make sure the patient is stable, but the next nurse gets mad that I am leaving her to do the whole admission. Similarly, just yesterday I was giving report to the next nurse, and letting her know about a patient that was admitted with a panic Hgb of 6.1, and that we typed and crossed, got consent for blood, but that we are just waiting for the lab to call when the blood is ready for us to pick it up from the blood bank. Right in the middle of my report to the next nurse, the lab called to tell us that the blood was ready. The IV was started, everything was done, the next nurse just had to transfuse, but she was mad to be getting slammed just as she was coming on, the same thing happens to me, but I don't blame the nurse before me, it just happens sometimes. I really take offense to this, sound familiar to anyone?
I do not start blood transfusion just before the change of shift, and I do not like the outgoing nurse to do the same to me. Why, b'cos there is usually too much going on at that time and the pt might end up not getting monitored as they should. It happened to me one time when the outgoing nurse started the transfusion minutes before leaving, by the time I was assigned the patient and got to see her, more than half of the blood has gone in less than 1 hour with only the first 5 minute V/S. Thanks to God nothing happen to the pt.
As for those nurses who complain about thing like that, I remind them nursing is 24hrs.
I do mostly LTC agency staffing, and just about every facilty the policy is that you do what you can and if that means the next shift has to do the admit, that's what happedns. You should do what you are able in the time you have (If admit comes in the morning, and it is now 2pm and you haven't started it..... you need to stay !!) but if you did most of it, and there are just a few things (MD hasn't called back to clarify or something along those lines.... you did your shift, go home.
Nursebarebari
412 Posts
I do not start blood transfusion just before the change of shift, and I do not like the outgoing nurse to do the same to me. Why, b'cos there is usually too much going on at that time and the pt might end up not getting monitored as they should. It happened to me one time when the outgoing nurse started the transfusion minutes before leaving, by the time I was assigned the patient and got to see her, more than half of the blood has gone in less than 1 hour with only the first 5 minute V/S. Thanks to God nothing happen to the pt.
As for those nurses who complain about thing like that, I remind them nursing is 24hrs.