most troubling trend in healthcare

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I've been anurse for several years, and frankly, I'm tired. There seem to be so many troubling trends nowadays. What, to you, seem to be the most troubling trends in healthcare? What can we,as nurses do the improve things? Thanks. By the way, this is NOT homework:lol2:

Specializes in Medsurg/ICU, Mental Health, Home Health.
100% of all people eventually die. This is very troubling.:coollook:

What's sadder is that this statistic has not changed! What are we going to do?

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Specializes in ICU, PICC Nurse, Nursing Supervisor.

this is so true .....im really fed up with upper administration not handleing buisness when it comes to these patients thinking we are a full service spa:mad:....the other day i made the statement over and over that i was a waitress instead of a nurse.....one of my patients kept calling for coffee over and over and if i did not bring it immedialy she would call the charge nurse:rolleyes:....well i had several really sick patients that needed morphine and other medications to manage their illness......i told the charge nurse to get the coffee:eek:...and she did:yeah:....where does this end

having customer satisfaction trump clinical needs of patients .

we are nurses , we are paid for our ability to assess a patients condition and implement / coordinate their care in accordance with that assessment .of course a good nurse should ( as a matter of course ) be able to manage their patients in a manner that the patient is comfortable with .

but fluffing pillows or a patients ego should not take priority over a crashing patient , managers are ( or at least used to be ) there to explain to patients / their families why their needs cannot always be met immediately .the h signs outside are for hospital not hotel .

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Specializes in ICU.
And of course where did COMMON SENSE go?...out the door

Don't worry Msrosebud28, I'll be back soon. We just need to focus our nursing education system more about what nurses actually do as opposed to spending our time reading books of disease processes and treatments.

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Specializes in Critical Care, Emergency, Education, Informatics.
Having customer satisfaction trump clinical needs of patients ..

This isn't anything new. Just more open and upfront. I've still got a copy of a letter by my head nurse, (shows you how long ago that was) stating she was disapointed in me. A couple of patients complained, that they didn't get their back rubs, and one patient even complained that I didn't leave the ashtray close enough after I gave him his meds. Yes pt's used to be able to smoke in bed.

It didn't matter that I had 4 pt's going to the OR and 8 fresh post ops. There were 28 patiens on the floor, 1 RN, 1 LPN and 1 aide.

The disapointing trend is that we as a proffesion, are just laying down and letting this all roll over us.

Now my personal troubling trend is the ever increasing BS that has to be done for accresidation. Just saw a crossfeed the other day were someone interpreted a JC tag to mean that all papers on the bulliten board must have tacks in all 4 corners. You have to be kidding me, right.

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Specializes in Psych , Peds ,Nicu.
This is so true! We have a special group of administrators, who aren't nurses or have been out of nursing so long they don't remember what nursing means, that walk around with their iPads to do customer surveys.

I reckon you ought to cheerily ask one to use their tray ( ipad ) to take some coffee to the family in room # .If any comeback your defence off course would be I was trying to promote customer satisfaction :D

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Specializes in Psych , Peds ,Nicu.
100% of all people eventually die. This is very troubling.:coollook:

Even more so if they didn't complete their customer surveys . Worse still would be they completed it , but due to lack of back rub you were unsatisfactory , damn another future client lost .

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Specializes in Oncology.
100% of all people eventually die. This is very troubling.:coollook:

This isn't proven to be 100% true yet, as some people have not completed the study yet. You and I, for example.

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Specializes in Psych , Peds ,Nicu.

The disapointing trend is that we as a proffesion, are just laying down and letting this all roll over us.

Seriously , this is the true shame of our profession , nurses do not appear willing to advocate for their PATIENTS care ( proper equipment , use of proven techniques , adequate staffing etc..) , but rather allow the absurdities being perpetrated to further CLIENT satisfaction .

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Specializes in Med surg, Renal, & PACU.

1-The people at the top who are only concerned with customer survey results. 2-The patients who view their experience as "hotel guests." The patient who you brought back from a code blue won't return a survey praising you, but the patient who was "neglected" because he didn't get his blankets fixed, pillows fluffed, or pump to stop beeping in the first 60 seconds of his call light going on, WILL return one and name you, which will affect the percentages of your entire unit. No matter that the so-called "neglect" occurred on a night when each nurse had a load of 9 patients, no CNA's on our 30 bed unit, and you were concerned with trying to keep at least 1 of your patients from crashing. What is wrong with this picture? Some of these administrators need to spend some time in the trenches. I love being a nurse but sometimes it is so disheartening...

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most troubling:

nurses are always short staffed and constantly being given more work/responsibility. there's never any time to spend with the patients.

The customer service aspect doesn't bother me so much. but the fact that we don't have time to CARE for our patients really does.

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When we started calling patients "customers".....when "customer satisfaction" is more important than safe care..............when nurses have to cater to families, instead of taking care of patients.....etc...etc....etc...

mc3

:nurse:

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Specializes in ICU.

Agreed, one thing that really bugs me is when nurses call the patient a client. There are much larger issues in nursing, but this one just irritates me. You think of a client and the thing that comes to my mind is a business transaction, not a healthcare situation. I understand healthcare is a business, but why the change from patients to clients, this makes me feel like we are treating the patients as moneymaking opportunities, which should not be the case.

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