What do you write on your pt's bulletin board?

I put the date (because after several days in a hospital, days run together), My name, my extension, the tech's name and their extension, who the charge is (which is usually me), who their doctor is, their room number and the direct phone number to their room. By the time I get to the bottom, there's very little room left. For holidays i'll draw trees or hearts or shamrocks in the corners or smiley faces for pts I know have had a rough day or two.

I usually put the date, my name and position, the nurse for the night, the room number and a little reminder to use the call bell. I've drawn turkeys for thanksgiving, balloons for birthdays, and my personal smiley face to remind them someones here....

We put patient name, room, date, diet, activity , rn, and ca. Diet and activity in case someone else answers a light and doesnt know the patient, they can see it says "up with assist" or "cardiac diet" or whatever. Helps us so people aren't calling us even more to ask if a patient needs to toilet or wants a snack..

We put date, nurse and aide's name up sometimes smiley faces or something festive. I think the quote thing is a cute idea but at the same time if I were a patient and I felt like crap something like that would irritate me, but that's just me, I'm sure a lot of patients would like it.

As long as they weren't religious, I wouldn't mind, as a patient. Might want to check with your facility, though. I'd hate for you to get in trouble for doing something nice, and we all know that no good deed goes unpunished. :uhoh21:

Date, RN: my name/extension, CNA: their name/extension and the room number all in big print with black ink. I write so big it takes up most of the board but some people need it that big so they can see it from the bed. Staff (me included) were writing in various colors but patients with poor sight were complaining that the colors were harder to read. For those with really bad eyesight I re-write it all on a piece of paper and tape it to the bedside table or bed rail so it practically hung right in their face.

I'm getting ready to transfer but on my current floor we had to write a goal for the day. I always wrote something like "sleep" "rest" "pain control" since on night shift no one gets up with PT or anything. If there was a surgery scheduled I'd write "Prepare for surgery." When I ask most patients what their goal was they would say "Go home" so I'd write that too. I hated going in rooms and the goal would be "Have a bowel movement" or something along those lines, I know that's a goal but not everyone who walks in the room needs to know.

Our NM (days) or assistant NM (nights) round on all the rooms everyday and if there was anything missing we'd hear about it. They also ask if we sat down in the room to talk to them, if the patient says no we'd hear about that.

"Don't call us, we'll call you"

My last place of employment wanted us to write "Pain med due at ____". I hated that because I wanted the patient to call me when they needed it, not when it was due. I say that because lots of patients are in pain with inadequate pain management and it is hard to know because they are waiting until "it is due".

I myself was guilty of that when I had my hysterectomy...I knew that I could have something every 2 hours, and a little over an hour my pain was 7/10, but like a good pt. I waited until the 2 hours to ask for meds. :uhoh21:

So I told my pts to ignore what the board said, and call me when they needed it so that I had the opportunity to assess how the pain med was working for them....

Paula

I usually just stick with the name of a co-worker I don't care for and the number to pizza hut

I used to keep my I&O on the board, but that got replaced with a family members grocery list one shift

I usually try to make sure my number is very very big, so I don't have room for much else. When I started on the floor we had a work clerk that would "forget" to call us when our patients buzzed the desk.

We just put the Dr name, Nurse name, and Aide name. We were putting paramaters like SPB

As far as the quote thing many pts have gotten upset religious or not. So I would just avoid it if I were you. We had one aide would write some confusious saying on the board and the patients really hated it, so I would end up erasing it.

I'm not a nurse yet, but when I was hospitalized to stop premature labor, and also when my son was in the NICU, they had us choose a goal and wrote that on the board along with the other information. It could be something as simple as help with a diaper change (in the very early days of his NICU stay), or something more involved, such as take the infant CPR class, research his diagnosis, etc.

Tiffany