Blog & Articles

Challenges in a Post COVID World

The national nursing shortage makes recruiting and retaining quality nursing staff extremely competitive. While facilities may have traditionally required 3-5 years of emergency department (ED) experience before training a nurse for triage, the lack of resources has forced some organizations into reducing the requirement to one year or less. As this requirement decreases, it is increasingly critical to have a well-defined onboarding path for nurses new to triage.

Despite almost two decades of attention and study, diagnostic error continues to be a main issue in healthcare, affecting an estimated 12 million people each year and causing harm in one-third of these cases.

The most comprehensive literature on this topic comes from “Improving Diagnosis in Health Care,” in which the first recommendation is to “facilitate more effective teamwork in the diagnostic process among health care professionals, patients, and their families.” Specifically, it calls for increasing nursing engagement in the diagnostic process; no longer is the diagnostic process the sole purview of a physician. Here we use a case review to demonstrate the importance of nurses in reducing diagnostic error and saving patient lives.

[3 MIN READ]

When most people think of triage, they think of nurses making sense of the chaos caused by 141 million annual visits to the ED.

Patients who are part of this massive onslaught of unscheduled care arrive daily at any hour, and the first person they see is someone in triage, usually a nurse, whose job is to quickly figure out who needs to be seen in what order.

In my early practice years, my ignorant impression was that triage was for dummies – all one had to do was just sit there and assign patients to a room.

Many years of experience and observation have taught me otherwise – that triage is where the best and brightest nurses should be. 

[6 MIN READ]

Any discussion of communication in healthcare must include the process of transferring patients and their vital medical information from one provider to another and/or from one healthcare setting to another.

Such transfers are known as healthcare handoffs.

Examples include when a patient is transferred from an ambulance to an ED or when a surgical patient is moved from the recovery room to a surgical floor.

A person-to-person handoff takes place when, for example, a physician going off duty signs off to the evening on-call doctor or when nurses report to each other at shift changes.

Handoffs are specific circumstances in healthcare that are prone to medical errors.

[6 MIN READ]

The national nursing shortage makes recruiting and retaining quality nursing staff extremely competitive. While facilities traditionally might have required 3-5 years of emergency department (ED) experience before training a nurse for triage, the lack of resources has forced some organizations into reducing the requirement to one year or less. As this requirement decreases, it is increasingly critical to have a well-defined onboarding path for nurses new to triage.

Additionally, having well-defined role expectations – especially during onboarding – can have a significant impact on a nurse’s job satisfaction and the likelihood they will stay with your organization.

[3 MIN READ]

After investing in an ongoing triage training program, some emergency department (ED) managers and educators become frustrated due to gaps in the application of that education. The goal of triage is to rapidly identify and sort patients to ensure they receive the appropriate care in the right amount of time. Updated triage practice protocol and ongoing triage training helps ensure optimal patient triaging. Implementing changes though does not always come easily.

[9 MIN READ]

Updated: March 18, 2020

Working on the front lines of an obstetric unit is fraught with vulnerability and uncertainty during these early stages of the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic. Your obstetric team has never before been so codependent in maintaining safety for you and your entire community. Arming yourself and teammates with the most current knowledge will help to keep you, your family, and your patients as safe as possible.

Since much is unknown about the novel coronavirus, review of daily updates and evolving information from our health experts is important. Staying knowledgeable and well-informed will require ongoing review of CDC updates and government notifications, as well as guidelines from our own health professionals like AWHONN and ACOG. All healthcare providers and frontline OB staff should work together to help ensure that everyone is practicing using the most current information. Teamwork along with shared learning will help everyone stay informed.

To keep yourself and your obstetric peers current on COVID-19, The Sullivan Group is providing this summary of recent information from the CDC and ACOG (last updated March 18, 2020).

[3 MIN READ]

As concerns for COIVD-19 continue to escalate in many areas of the country, it is imperative that triage staff remain alert to their role in early identification of potential infection. 

[6 MIN READ]

Is there really such a thing as a normal day on the OB unit? Highly doubtful. Unpredictability and uncertainty loom from the beginning of your shift to the end. But what if you could achieve some control over your day and try to decrease both your personal stress level and the stress of those in your immediate environment? While keeping your day 100% stress-free may not be possible, at least lowering the stress level for yourself and others is achievable and can help you to maintain stellar composure through the most grueling of patient scenarios.

[2 MIN READ]

Your organization might find itself hiring more new, inexperienced nurses for your emergency department due to the national nursing shortage. While these new hires arrive with a nursing degree, you need to be sure that each has a baseline set of knowledge to effectively treat patients in your ED.

Our RSQ® Solutions – Nursing Clinical Excellence Program was designed to help level-set the knowledge base of your clinical workforce. Our team of experienced ED nurses and educators compiled the blueprint below as a foundation for what an effective continuing education program might look like for your ED staff in their first three years of employment.