Recently my friend's OR has started having the non OR nurses in admitting check in the patient for surgery. I mean check.in.the.patient. A non OR nurse will be looking at consent, ID, blood band, allergies, site marking: Universal Safety Checklist.
The OR nurse simply receives the patient as its pushed through the door and pray it's the right pt for the right surgery. The OR nurses are specifically told to not interview their patient!
My friend is going nuts thinking about this. It's hard enough to make sure everything is lined up for surgery, let alone have a patient you haven't checked in come through the doors. Implants, instrumentation... A non OR nurse doesn't know what we need. It's just a crazy, unsafe system.
Obviously her hospital administrators have no idea what a surgical nurse does and the efforts we go through to see that patient safely through surgery.
Yes, this is a physician led process (ya think?) but upper level nurse leaders are letting this go through. I don't think the OR director is permanent, he just doesn't care.
What does YOUR Operating room do? What does Joint Commission say? AORN? Who should be checking in that patient for surgery? What about SBAR? Have you had close calls if your facility has non operating room RNs check in the patient? My friend is looking for another job, btw. She's not interested in playing games with safety.
