Breaking the Ice

I have decided to retell a story that a SICU nurse told me. I am going to use the first person narrative in order to keep things interesting yet anonymous.

I arrived for my normal 7 to 7 on Sunday morning. I got report from the night nurse and was given 2 relatively stable patients with the expectation of another admit. A couple of hours into my shift we, the SICU, received a patient from the OR who was unstable and needed labs and a chest x-ray immediately. Because I was light on patients, I was charged with him.

When I tried to order both the labs and x-ray, I ran into a roadblock; the patient was not in the computer system. Obviously he was a patient, he’d just come from the OR. Why in the world was he not in the system? I called down to admitting to see if they knew or could enter him into the system. They couldn’t because apparently he had come through the ER. I called the ER to ask them to put him into the system; they sent me back to admitting.

By the time I finished this game of ping-pong, there had been a 20 minute delay in care and the doc on call was furious and of course took it out on me. We eventually got everything straightened out and the patient officially admitted and stabilized.

This should never have happened and would not have happened during the normal work week. On the weekend, there is less auxiliary staff and services and unfortunately mistakes happen. Given, this is not something that happens every week or even every month, but it happened and who’s to say it won’t happen again.

Narrative Inspiration

We want to hear real stories from real nurses. We want to know when and how it’s hard, easy, frustrating, and fulfilling to care for patients at nights and on the weekends. 

While conducting this research, a colleague of mine visited a local hospital. As she was walking down the hallway a couple of nurses passed her proclaiming,

“That happens every weekend.”

What was that nurse referring to? What happens every weekend? Is there a shortage of supplies? Are doctors hard to reach? Did a nurse or two not show up for their shift?

These are the questions we are trying to answer. These are the experiences we want you to share with us.

Instructions for Nurses Posting on this Blog

First of all, I would like to thank all the nurses whom have graciously agreed to participate in our research study. As direct care nurses, you have first-hand knowledge of the barriers to care on nights and weekend, and thus your experiences are vital to our research. We hope to use the data we collect to address and ultimately assure that nurse work environments are optimal, no matter what day of the week or time of day.

When you post a comment about your personal experience while working during off-peak hours, please remember not to use patient names, names of co-workers, or the name of the hospital at which you work. Also, please only use your first name or a nickname.

Again, thank you for your time and support of this important research.

Welcome

We are researching how and why off-peak work environments are different, and how they affect nurse's work and patient care. Our research method of choice is institutional ethnography (IE). IE will allow us to determine the organizational factors that influence nursing and thus patient outcomes. We know from previous research that patients are more at risk during off-peak hours, nights and weekends. This study aims to determine what factors within the hospital environment influence or cause these outcomes. We seek to gain a more thorough understanding of the nurses' work and experiences.

My name is Katy Krottinger, and I am the Grant Coordinator for this project and will also be maintaining this blog. If you are interested in knowing more about our findings, please email me at katharine.krottinger@mwsu.edu.