Hi Phil
(I am a student nurse hoping to complete my last year). I have a daughter currently working in London. She is a qualified midwife trained in Australia but can't work as midwife there. She was telling me that some of the wards are really disorganised. For example there are no bedside charts so this means that every temp, Bp and respiration has to be remembered and entered in the charts at the central nursing station. When I have been on prac, mainly public hospitals, We have Medications & obs sheets, fluid balance, 24 hour fluid balance summary, care plan and waterlow assessment (danger of pressure are care devised by patient build, condition weight etc, post anaesthesia obs & wound care chart where applicable). All these are left by the relevant bed and the only time we need to resort to the main chart, is when we check patient history, blood tests or orders and documenting inpatient notes. We remove the med chart if needing to make up IV abs and fluid orders for checking and return it once going back to the bedside. All this saves a lot of steps and removes the need to write down
obs a second time. How have hospitals managed without this type of system? I'm not trying to be critical but I think this was possibly the biggest difference she encountered. plus the 12 hours shifts. ours are usually a standard eight
What system of documentation have you in the states and elsewhere? a bedside system or central nursing station for all documenting. I know I'm being a stickybeak but I'm interested. I believe that anything nurses can do to help their workload and provide solutions should be taken up, it takes time to make changes but having the paperwork there would be instantaneous reporting, cut down activity at nursing station and save a lot of walking. It has probably been sugfgested time and time again by nurses with more experience and seniority but tell me what you think.