I work as an acute care Med-Surg float nurse and my hospital has implemented a new process where patients are being transferred to units from other units, ie. the ED to the floor, ICU to the floor, and from affiliate hospitals to our hospital without having to call and give a verbal report. I find this practice outrageous and an accident waiting to happen.
The reason behind this new policy is to expedite patient transfers and open beds faster. All I ever learned is how important patient the hand-off is, and now we are actually no longer required to give report to the next nurse who will be taking care of the patient.
Apparently now that we have the EPIC system to do our patient charting, the decision-making people feel that verbal reports are no longer needed. However, I have had several instances where EPIC contained very little patient information and virtually no history, so I literally had to ask the female patient, who was busy vomiting, why she was even admitted to the hospital. The fact that she was a stage 4 CKD patient with only one remaining kidney was nowhere to be found on EPIC. She needed pain meds, but her current medication reconciliation had not been completed, delaying her receiving any medications.
And I must also stress the last Magnet hospital I worked at did the same thing by getting rid of verbal report for patient transfers. Has anyone else been experiencing this practice, and if so, how do you deal with the huge safety risk? What happened to placing patient safety first?
