Get to know your patients to improve care

by Doug Della Pietra "Tell me something new or something you didn't already know about your patients," the nurse manager asked her team. Silence--awkward silence; the kind of silence most of us would want to fill with just about anything. "Come on, you just worked a 12-hour shift," she said. "No one has learned anything new about their patients?" Silence prevailed that day and the next and the next. Undeterred, Clare kept asking the question at daily huddles. "They were doing the work," she said, "but weren't talking to the patient. You don't always have to do something for the patient like give meds. You can just go in and talk." It took about a week of asking her team what they'd learned about their patients when finally someone spoke up. "My patient has the same birthday as I do," she said. "How did that come up," Clare asked. "Doing the two patient IDs," the nurse explained. It's important to note the purpose of learning something new about patients wasn't to have a story to tell. Rather, it was the empathy borne in the team after reflecting on questions like "How do you think he/she feels?" and "What can we do?" posed by Clare and others. For example, one of the unit's patients was admitted with chest pain. Without going into all of the details, one of the patient's nurses for only a few hours was Michele--a nurse of 25 years, experienced, dedicated, by the book, direct and "here for all of the right reasons," as Clare put it. The patient was overweight, dr...
Source: hospital impact - Category: Health Managers Authors: Source Type: blogs