Update = Still Raining

When will this rain stop? I am not kidding when I say it has not stopped raining in the last 48 hours. Roads are flooded, schools have been closed for the last 4 days, my yard is handling the water - but I do have a few leaks in the roof. I am thankful though - I did drive around town a little bit and there is a lot of flooding. I have never in my life seen anything like it. I mean you see it on tv around the country, but this is the first time I have seen with my own eyes - roads closed due to flooding. I am thankful that it's ok around my home.

I've heard conflicting reports regarding my hospital. The news was reporting that the first floor was flooded and patients needed to be moved to different floors or transferred to other hospitals. I haven't been to the hospital, but according to their emails, none of that is true. I guess I'll find out on Sunday when I return to work.

Speaking of work, I have finally had enough with shiftchange report taking on average an hour to two hours because dayshift is so unorganized. I communicated (nice word) my frustrations with my manager and director. It seems the manager took it to heart because an email was sent to everyone yesterday regarding shift change report and organization. I doubt that will do the trick, but at least they are aware of it.

I have to come up with another strategy to decrease the lenght of time it takes. I think I will start using the Kardexes as my report sheet - that way they will be filled in & up to date at least. I am pushing hard for them to bring back "voicecare"...which is basically where you record the patient's history, what they are there for, who the doctors are, etc and then an update as to anything pertinent going on. That's all I need to know. I feel like the dayshift nurses I deal with fluff up report with many details that I don't need to know. It wastes valuable time. I can only wish that one day evening shift change will be as smooth and calm as morning shift change. I absolutely hate getting out of report at 8:30 pm (when I start my shift at 6:45 pm)...and I have a discharge to do, a new admit is being brought up from the ER and my remaining patients are wanting their medications so they can go to bed - not to mention the orders missed, the orders that need to be clarified, dealing with pharmacy, dealing with the lab...ahhhhhhhhh....I just want a nice start to my shift.

Dayshift may say nightshift is easier because the patients are sleeping.....which isn't true.....but nightshift starts out like crap because of all the loose ends we have to tie up that didn't get done during the day. Ok, enough venting & I am not generalizing or stereotyping. We have some good dayshift nurses who are organized and know how to use time management to their advantage. We also have those dayshift nurses that are looking to milk the clock and waste valuable time. I'm sure we have some disorganized nightshift nurses also. All I'm asking is for a decent shiftchange report that doesn't take 90 minutes on 4 or 5 patients. That's not asking too much, is it?

Maybe that's my sign to try out some other aspect of nursing. There's not a whole lot to choose from at my hospital.....but other hospitals have different fields. Perhaps ER or Labor/Delivery would be worth venturing into. I'm sure all areas have their problems & I'll gripe about something........but I can't see it taking 90 minutes to get report.

My other gripe for the past week...I come in last Sunday evening and see that there are 4 isolation patients on the floor. Three of them have c-diff (nasty frequent diarrhea) and one is on respiratory isolation until they rule out menningitis. I think "Ok, there are 3 nurses tonight, surely they will divide up the c-differs between us."

Ummm...wrong. Guess who got ALL FOUR isolation patients......ME. I immediately began to investigate who the dayshift clinical leader was & why doesn't she like me? I think for a moment that I could complain about this assignment, but figure...nah, we have a patient care tech who will help me clean up my patients when they frequently go to the bathroom. Wrong...another patient on the floor became a Baker Act (patient is threatening to hurt themself or others) and they pulled our patient care tech to be a sitter for him. So I lost our tech for about 5 hours. Luckily they found someone else to come in & help out. It turned out to be an ok night. The next two nights were also ok.

Time to get some sleep - have a good weekend every one! Say a prayer that the rain lets up here in Florida!!!