This is about that darn dream again; yet, it is relevant in one aspect. In the course of my career, I wanted different patient's every day. I believed I was more attentive that way, because the situation was new and different. I discovered, that if I had the same patient more than two days, I was likely to start making some assumptions based on prior information, and I might under assess the patient.
Many nurses want the same patient's day in and day out; plus, there is some institutional hype regarding "Continuity of Care", that is often touted to the public at large.
I awoke from that same old dream
A nursing unit drop-in,
It could have been a lot more fun
If Betty took me shoppin',
When I arrived, they made me Charge
So I chose the fractured leg,
Everyone gave me the stink-eye
While one of them even begged.
He said:
I wanted the patients that Peggy had
Like our hand-off from night till this morning,
He almost incited a riot
So I glared, as if sending a warning,
And as usual, I was so busy
I ignored my own patient, again,
This is my hospital nightmare
Last count, at one hundred and ten.
2 comments:
Remember the days of "primary nursing?" An old nursing care paradigm that never really worked out.
Well, I discovered that some hospitals really took it to heart. They banished all of the LVN's to the clinics, and removed any nursing assistants from the ICU. At that time, at the University, even the Lab Couriers were dropped, no patient transport..........We RN's had to do every single dang thing! We drew all of our venous and arterial blood samples and had to walk them to the lab, assisted on all of the medical procedures (made sure those procedures were performed properly), participated in Code Blue almost every shift, (particularly if it was our Units duty for the week, to cover the ICU's). Thus, Primary-ly we did almost all of all possible work. But heck, we wuz younger then, remember?
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