Trusting your coworkers

[KalipsoRed21, BSN, RN]

To make a long story short. I don't like to ask for help unless I feel I that I won't be able to get to the task I need to do. I don't like to ask for help for two reasons.

1) Because frequently when I ask a tech they forget what I asked them to do for me, or mess up what I requested them to do in some way that causes me to have to go do what I asked to be done anyway. Then I get aggrivated because I thought someting important had been completed but it didn't. Why put myself throught the aggrivation?

Tech's are busy people. I know because I use to be one. They generally have plenty of responsibilites that they should be doing for patient care BEFORE a nurse asks them to do something.

2) I find that if I'm picky about when I ask for help then my tech's know that I really need it and the tasks that I request to get done, get completed in a timely fashion.

I've gotten griped at a couple of times at work now for being to slow and having 'delays' in my patient's care. This aggrivates me because I work swing shift and on most days that I work I don't even get to grab food, much less sit down and eat.

It's not like I'm walking around with my finger up my nose, so what do they really expect from me? They told me I need to ask for help more. Well I'm not sure when I need help. Does that make sense? Yeah, if I have a code or a really sick patient I have no issues grabbing people. But the run of the mill patient that needs a work up? If I have 4 patients that I'm doing work ups on I just prioritize them and get started....why should I call for help with that?

Sure if I saw that we were slow or that other nurses were sitting around at the desk I'd say "Hey, I got 4 work ups to do, any body got time to give me a hand?" But most of the time there aren't people just hanging around, every one is busy. If I don't have a sick patient, or one that I'm afraid for, why do I need to ask for help?

[tiddleywink]

I agree with you in not asking for help unless you have a really sick pt, or you are just drowning. Where I work the techs are funny about who they will help - and they stay clear of the high maintenance nurses that ask them to get vitals on all their pts while they are sitting at the desk.

I feel like I get help when I need it - because I rarely ask for it. So, if I do, they know I need them.

Another thing I do, is if I have had a pt in a room with a delay in getting them worked up - I actually document "assumed care, delay in care initiation due to this RN with critical pt" that way, heaven forbid the chart end up in review there are no speculations on why the pt was in the room for 45min before you drew blood. It clarified that you were with another pt.

The other day I had a pt that was coded for 2 hours. SO for 2 hours I could not get out of that room. No one checked on my other pts - so i wrote in all their charts the reason for delays in meds/labs etc... ugh!!

[canoehead, BSN, RN]

Sometimes it takes just as much time to find someone, ask, check that it was done and review the results as it does to do the darned thing yourself.