At least twice a shift, if not more, giving a report to another nurse about your patients. The first thing you do
Missing large chunks of information
The nurses give the report and the information is very basic, then when you sit down to review the orders or the history of the patient you notice some important factors that would have been nice to know. Important diagnostic test, or item that the nurse was supposed to do and might have gotten to busy for. Since I work nights if the day nurse isn’t able to obtain a respiratory panel or a urine specimen, and they tell me that these are missing I have no problem doing it during my shift. But getting a call from the lab saying it’s still pending because the computer says it was collected.
Having no organization no flow
The nurse that gives the report and just jumps around from topic to topic. This drives me crazy, they give you piece of information, you ask a question, they jump from the position of an IV to respiratory to medical history to diagnosis, each time giving a factoid here and there before bouncing again to another topic. I have my own nurse brain and as someone who tries to keep their notes in order, to me it’s maddening. There are people out there that are for the most part that they lack organization in their report. I am a proponent of a good nurses brain.
Being to long winded or too short
I was considering clumping this with the section of no organization. I didn’t because sometimes they are organized the nurse and the report is well organized but runs too long or too short. I have had nurses go into minute details on everything and every lab and diagnostic, even if the results are within the normal range. Now if the lab and test are relevant to the diagnosis then yes, the result of normal would be useful to the oncoming nurse. But I have stood there received a report from nurses and not note half of what they say to me, they go over how they ate, the visitors they had, and so on. Then, on the other hand, is the nurse that tells you basic information. The information you can get from looking at the patient, the patients on room air, IV in the left arm, wound vac to the left leg. The details that are of importance, when the wound vac was placed, or changed, output in the last shift. There is a fine line between being too short or too long.
A Quick Disappearance
The report is given, you turn around because you have a question and the nurse that gave you report seconds ago, has somehow already left. This happens when the nurse just wants to go home. I once got report from a nurse, she gave me a quick report as we entered into the room the nurse introduces me and says she’s leaving. She mentioned that she had inserted a Foley, once entering into the room I noticed that the indwelling catheter was actually continuous bladder irrigation (C. B. I.). I turned to the nurse to ask questions regarding the C. B. I. and she was gone. She gave me the wrong information and then punched out and went home. In the end, I found out the information from doctor’s orders and notes, but the heads up from the day nurse would have decreased my initial anxiety going into the shift.
Now, no one can say that they have given only great reports, every nurse will have a bad shift and has the possibility of giving a bad report, but my observation of these items comes from those few nurses who consistently do one or more of these items.