What about having 'Undercover Nurses'?

[FireStarterRN]

As I've mentioned, I'm doing a travel contract in a nearby city. The facility is currently scrambling to prepare for a joint commission inspection. Basically, this means sprucing up the veneer of regulatory compliance. Meanwhile, I, as an outsider actually working in the trenches, see many inadequecies in the system and workings of this hospital that are directly affecting patient care.

I was thinking that it would be a very useful evaluation of a facility to have an 'Undercover Nurse'. This nurse could travel from hospital to hospital, working 3 months at a time as an actual frontline nurse, evaluating hospitals from the inside.

[Morettia2, BSN, RN]

i think undercover nursing would be a great idea!!! of course not conducted by the hospital itself but by and independent evaluating agency, that will publish its report for both admin and staff to read. i think that would be the only way to get right down to what the probs are.

when staff knows that an eval is occurring then everyone is on guard and the evel is not being conducted in the "real working atmosphere" and thus results are of little use. i think it would also be great for the admin to be evaluated also, so they can see first hand how they affect the staff. and if current nurses do the eval then of course there will be biases, fear of retribution etc., and it is easy for the admin to dismiss the findings, but not if an independent contractor does it. also, if an independent nurse does the eval, then it would be an eval of the entire program/hospital (from nurse perspective) as a whole; no one person/nurse would be targeted (unless something really really bad was going on), it would be a general perspective.

that's exactly how it should be done, independent, no bias. i was trying to say that in my post but i have also been up for over 20 hours after working 3 12's in a row, so i rambeled on in my post. but i agree!!!

[patoyia]

Yikes!!! Three 12's in a row!!! Go to bed