Full Heart, Depleted Time

 

Full Heart, Depleted Time

Time flies when you are having fun, or chasing a puppy and trying to work 60 hours a week and grade papers on top of that! Yes, recently we welcomed an adorable chocolate lab puppy we named Moose into our home. He has taken our time, our money, and all of our hearts.

 

Having a puppy has opened my eyes to the concept of time management. Oh my goodness do you need to be a good time manager to be a puppy mom. You have to plan chores, because the puppy will try to pee for the 5 minutes you run to switch over the laundry. You have to plan groceries, as you will starve if you forget to buy food because you would rather starve than put that little guy in his crate all alone. Although I haven’t blogged in a long time, having a puppy made me think of nursing and time management.

 

Time management is a concept young nurses often have a difficult time with. One minute you are on top of charting and meds, and the next minute you realized you were sucked into a patient care crisis and are now extremely behind. It can feel like you aren’t successful, when you have to stay later to finish charting, or if you were late on an antibiotic. However, always remember that you are doing the best you can, and nursing is a team sport.

 

On a busy med-surg floor, you will learn time management. Whether you want to or not. I remember interviewing for my current job and the nurses tested me with, “this job can be tough – you can have a post-op patient in pain, a CF patient with 10 meds, an infant who is withdrawing from drugs with no parents, and an oncology patient post-chemo with nausea…and they all need and deserve your attention NOW”. As a former solo camp nurse,  I answered this challenge with a smile and said something like “bring it on”. Yet, as quick as you can be, and as great at prioritizing you are, you need to still have strong time management skills.

 

Some things I do “beat the clock”:

 

• Prepare a room with the supplies I need as soon as I find out that I am getting an admission.
• Keep a “paper brain” – if you are a nurse you will know what I mean, if not – this is where we write down anything and everything about each patient – and if we loose it we feel like a lost puppy….looking to our charge nurse with big puppy eyes of worry saying, “Oh no! I lost my brain!”
• Cluster care!!!
  • If meds are due at 0800 and 0900….depending on if they are multivitamins or pain meds…would 0830 work? Now there are sometimes you have to be exact with meds, but if they are vitamins or creams….30 minutes isn’t going to make a huge difference.
  • If you have meds, vital signs and an assessment to do…..find a time to do it all at once
• Delegate – but only appropriately.
  • Don’t delegate things outside of the LNAs license
  • Don’t delegate if you already have to go into the patient’s room at that exact time, unless you are extremely busy.
  • Delegate with the entire floor in mind – team sport right?
• Ask for help
  • If you are drowning, ask your charge nurse if assignments can be switched up
  • Ask you charge nurse to help
  • Ask another RN to help
• Keep track of what you’ve done and what still needs to be completed
• Prioritize patient care, but if you are so behind in documentation, maybe there is a nurse or charge nurse that could give that Tylenol.
• Learn from your mistakes with time management, reflect and make changes!
• If there is a worried mother telling you about a story about a baby shower, but you have pain meds to give, assessments to complete and missing documentation….
  • You have to learn to kindly say you must go but will be back soon
• Talk to fellow nurses about their tips, tricks and suggestions.

 

Time is a precious thing. The rich and the poor have it, but how we spend it makes it more valuable from one day to the next. Time spent with a patient is never wasted, but if you are compromising your family time because you are staying an hour and a half late to finish documentation, it’s time to reassess your day. To a certain patient, your time could make their day, never forget that. Even when time is crunched, never skip steps such as double checking meds or policies in order to beat the clock. If you are blessed by the nursing admission gods and have everything done, all your patients are doing great, and you are sitting around chatting, check in with your nursing team to see if they need help – you will thank your lucky stars when you are drowning, and because they return the favor and help out you can doggie paddle to shore. Finally, thank you for your time you spend as a nurse. You make a difference, and yes it’s a job, and you have a dreaded time card, but as you know nursing is so much more than twelve hours on the clock.

 

~ Keep on Caring ♥