NBR - Fellow Hospital Workers

[elleswarth]

To those that work in a hospital setting in any capacity - does your ER have to call report when sending patients to the floors? Huge meeting about it at work today and I want proof that other hospitals do this. Thank you!!

[hazelnut]

Yes, our ER calls report before sending patients up to us. Well, they're supposed to, not to say that they always do. We write them up if they don't.

[ourcrazynavylife]

Our ER has to call report as well. Huge no-no and they will get reported if they don't.

[Deleted]

Yes, however, they are very smug about it. We don't have the best relationship with the ER RNs because they try to sneak ER to OR pts to our floor (we are a post surgical unit) leaving our RNs to do all the work to get the pt to the OR. Very often we don't get the pt to the OR on time or they make it to the suite but are delayed because antibiotics didn't stay with the pt. I have taken report, called the OR and found that ER RNs were told to hold pt, call back the ER and say I can't accept pt and they send them anyway. We are filling out delay of care event reports when this happens, but it hasn't changed a thing yet.

[elleswarth]

So it's a consensus across the board that most ER nurses all act the same way! Ours is only a 30 bed ER, and we're only a 180 bed hospital, so we're certainly very small. They seem to think that they "don't possibly have time" to call report on their patients, even for one minute to give a run down. I find it to be a safety issue, because I'm getting patients with no assessment done, no notes in the chart other than the initial greeting that sounds like sunshine and rainbows, and then I get a hot, unresponsive mess that I have to call a rapid response or a code on. Thank you all for answering me!! How many beds are your hospitals?

[Deleted]

665 beds

[kcrus]

Yes, ours do. We briefly tried a fax report system (only to the floors- we still got nurse-to-nurse in the ICU) but that was abandoned quickly. It's now a verbal report from a nurse in the ED to another nurse, though it isn't always the patient's actual nurse but rather a nurse expediter that oversees all transfers. Most of us hate it because we don't get the full story, but it's better than nothing.

[mapetitefamille]

When I worked as a floor nurse the ED had to call report. It'd have been out of the question for them not to! This was at a 700 bed academic medical center.

[cmcwi6xh]

When I worked in the ICU at a large university hospital in ny, we always got report from the A ED but it was usually terrible. Patients would also show up a hot mess when the report was axox3 and stable, etc.

I did travel nursing in ny though, and the whole culture there is so different. I got jaded pretty fast...

[lasawyer91]

We have a transfer center that handles all the calls. The nurse from the ed contacts the transfer center who than will make it aware to who ever needs to know. The doctors offices that are affiliated with the hospital use the transfer center too when they are admitting patients or sending anyone to the ed. It's kind of am extra step but it works well for us

[elleswarth]

Right now, the ED calls admitting, admitting books the bed, admitting pages our HUC/Secretary, who then calls the charge nurse of that unit and let's them know about the transfer and then the charge nurse assigns it to an RN. Sometimes they show up 2 minutes later, other times it's hours later. We go looking in the chart if we have time, but otherwise, it's usually just a hot mess surprise. Not safe, not cool.

[hazelnut]

Feb 14, 2015 15:37:40 GMT -5 elleswarth said:

Right now, the ED calls admitting, admitting books the bed, admitting pages our HUC/Secretary, who then calls the charge nurse of that unit and let's them know about the transfer and then the charge nurse assigns it to an RN. Sometimes they show up 2 minutes later, other times it's hours later. We go looking in the chart if we have time, but otherwise, it's usually just a hot mess surprise. Not safe, not cool.

That's crazy. I can't imagine not getting report! We get enough hot messes even with the system in place. My favorite excuse is, "They weren't like that in the ER!" Our problem with the ER is that they'll give report, then wait to bring the kid. It's worse around shift change. If they book a kid at 5:30 or anytime after, you can bet your ass they'll be rolling up at 6:50 because the ER nurses don't want to pass the kid off then take a new patient before shift change. It can be really unsafe and unfair to the patient to be transferred up at such a busy time.