Friday, January 29, 2010

Exciting Changes - kinda

There are some major changes coming to my unit at the beginning of March. First...we are getting rid of all the patient care techs on our floor. Second...our nurse to patient ratio is supposed to be 3 to 1. I will believe it when I see it. I get the feeling that it will be more like 4 to 1...which will be difficult. 3 to 1...that's doable.

The whole idea behind this is to increase patient satisfaction. Medicare came up with this policy that if the patient's (65 & older) are not satisfied with their hospital stay, Medicare doesn't have to pay the bill. Thus, this is giving hospitals quite an incentive to base everything around patient satisfaction. A lot of the questions are based on nursing...ex. "Do you feel your nurse kept you informed with what was going on? Did you have good rapport with your nurse?" etc.

Sooooooo they think if the nurses spend more time with their patients, the patients will respond appropriately. It's worth a try. I'm not sure it will be successful...because as any nurse knows...a good tech is quite a help. With no techs for assistance, we're going to be relying on other nurses & if we are all busy with our patients...how are we going to help each other? Time will tell.

On the other hand, I am hoping this will allow us to have more patient/nurse interaction. With having 5 patients & pretty much less than a 4 hr window (7pm to 11pm) to assess, medicate & establish a good rapport...it makes it difficult. Most of our older patients want to go to sleep around 9 or 10 & get mad if we are in there beyond that time. I would like to spend more time doing nursing stuff as opposed to charting or orders or talking to MD's. Let us be nurses who care for the patients & have everyone else be less reliant on us.

I heard at another one of our hospitals, they got rid of the patient care techs and the respiratory techs. I guess the nurses are doing the breathing treatments. I would be worried if I were a respiratory tech...I'm sure more hospitals will be switching to this in the future & probably only need a couple of them in the hospital for intubating critical patients.

I still have my orientee for the next month. I love it. She is really doing well & thus making my job easier. She's taken on a lot of challenges & I have stepped back to allow her to start using some of her own critical thinking skills. It's hard to not want to take over & do what needs to be done...but it's the best way for her to learn.

A bunch more nurses left my old hospital. Pretty soon there will be no one left that I know. I'm happy for them. They deserve to work somewhere that they are respected & appreciated.

I read Dear John....very quickly. It's an easy read. I can tell it's going to be a sadddddddddd movie. I don't usually cry when it comes to movies, but I'll have a few tissues with me for this one. I thought it was a good story. I'm going back to reading the True Blood series.....vampires...lol, not much to cause tears.

Still planning for the cruise, but don't have an exact date as my friend is still waiting for her Canadian passport. I hope we are able to take off work at the same time...not sure with all the new changes coming up.

4 comments:

Amanda said...

I would die without my PCAs! On my transplant/surgical unit, we are usually at a 6:1 ratio. With all the assistance people need to move after surgery, plus trips to the bathroom, baths, dressing changes, pain meds, I would be lost. I can not tell you how many times I have been in the middle of a dressing change and been paged to 2 other rooms. I hope it works out well for you and I hope they stick to the 3:1 ratio.

hoodnurse said...

3:1 sounds awesome! Have to say I'm a little jealous, but that can still be overwhelming if you have one awful patient.
As for Medicare not paying for visits where the patient isn't satisfied- say WHAT? I wish people understood that hospital visits are not going to be as fun as Disneyland.

捷運 said...
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LivingDeadNurse said...

wow three to one? we have 30:1 lol

i hope it works out! though i wouold be really lost without my CNA's