Today I spent twelve hours following the house supervisor at Timpanogos Hospital. It was a busy day. My objectives for today included learning more about how to manage a schedule, how to positively interact with employees, and how to manage conflict in order to be an effective manager and/or leader. Some employees had to be called off on certain units due to low census. Later in the shift, a few employees had to be called back in due to admissions. I was given the task of calling one employee and telling her that she was being called off of the upcoming night shift. I completed the task without difficulty or hesitation. My mentor told me that sometimes employees try to argue him into not calling them off, but if census is low and staffing is excessive for patient acuity levels, staff is called off regardless of their argument.
My mentor interacted with all employees in a respectful and positive manner. He took the time to talk to each of the nurses not only about the patients, but also about their personal lives. He called them by name, and shared humorous stories on more than one occasion. He appeared to put the staff at ease, and let them know that he was there to help. We were called to get supplies on more than one occasion, and the staff verbalized their gratitude.
There was one nurse who had gone above and beyond her job description. She made necessary calls and arranged to have the next shift as well as her own appropriately staffed for her unit. My mentor presented her with a gift card for her extra efforts to express appreciation. The hospital has several gift cards to different businesses set aside for that purpose, and the boost to this nurse's morale was obvious upon her receipt of the card.
The NICU currently is equipped with six beds. There were eleven babies total in the NICU, so they had to open one of the adult ICU units that had been closed specifically for those other babies. Each of the babies in the makeshift NICU had its own large room, and the nurses loved the setup. A new NICU is being built to accommodate the anticipated increase in patients due to a new neonatologist the hospital has recruited who is in high demand.
Last night, there was a mixup regarding the physicians and a patient. One physician attempted to admit a patient, but was unable to because someone mistakenly thought he did not have admitting priviledges. A hospitalist was involved, and yet another physician was angry about the situation because he was called at two o'clock in the morning regarding the patient's necessity for admission and the patient was not his. I think, and my mentor agreed, that the situation could have been easily resolved without unnecessarily upsetting a physician. My mentor and I had the pleasure of listening to the uninvolved physician rant about the other physician in the emergency department. Apparently the original physician was to blame for the entire fiasco. My mentor encouraged him to file a formal complaint in order to better resolve the situation. Neither my mentor nor myself understood why three physicians instead of one became involved in the attempted admission of the patient last night. The botched admission process caused major delays in that patient's care, and could have been avoided.
The operating room staff were placed on standby for a possible surgery that never happened. They were already present from a previous emergency procedure, and my mentor was reluctant to let them go until we knew whether the other possible surgery would happen that afternoon because they were technically not on call at that time. We took a few trips between the ER and the OR in an attempt to expedite the process. The second surgery did not happen.
In the midst of all of this, a fountain soda machine in one floor's nourishment room began gushing fluid spontaneously from the top of the machine and under the sink where tubing was located. It was a huge, wet, sticky mess. I watched my mentor and another male staff member shut the machine down. I am glad they knew what to do, because I was never taught how to handle that in nursing school!
Today I met my goals. I observed my mentor frequently consulting the schedule and making changes according to the units' needs. I watched him calmly and positively interact with hospital staff, and calmly handle the conflict regarding the physicians. I am happy to have one more clinical shift complete, and I am pleased that I have only three more shifts left. My mentor works every other weekend. I will follow him tomorrow, and again in two weeks on Saturday February 26 and Sunday February 27.
No comments:
Post a Comment