The competition between hospitals has become ridiculous with the focus on customer service and not direct patient care. The stress put upon nurses to always keep the numbers of wait times and time to treatment has become a health issue for nurses in the ER. It is all about the numbers and not patient care. With joint commission and Magnet controlling our hospitals nurses are no longer nurses but instead hostess and servers. The stress levels and burn out rates of nurses is increasing each year. Bedside nursing will soon become a technical job and nurses will only be responsible for charting, medications, and maintaining the flow to ensure speedy treatment like McDonald’s.
Original Post
August 13, 2010
Title: Increased nurse responsibility and the effects on bedside care
The role of the nurse is an ever increasing scope. I am close to entering only my fourth year as an RN and in this short time have seen numerous responsibilities placed upon our RN’s that were not previously there. Unfortunately, the fore mentioned responsibilities mainly consist of documentation that keep the hospital in compliance with JACHO, OSHA, and maintain Magnet status, NOT bedside nursing interventions. Most of these committees are present to keep hospitals in check and make sure they adhere to patient safety guidelines. However, as we add these additional items that require daily documentation (ie: falls risk, elopement risk, etc), we are pulling the RN farther and farther from the bedside! I pose the question, how does this increase patient safety?
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