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EDITOR'S
NOTE |
| Illustrations by Malcolm Garris/PhotoDisc |
October 19, 1998 My dad was in the hospital last week and has no idea if he ever had a registered nurse involved in his care. He tells me that he lay in bed as person after person walked into his room, checked something, and walked out. "How am I doing?" "Can I get something to eat?" "When will the doctor be in?" To all those questions, he got a smile, a nod, and then the mysterious people, all dressed alike, left his room. Too many people I know have told me in the past few months that they’ve been a hospital patient without ever seeing a nurse. Of course, there must have been nurses there, I tell them. And then the former patients ask, "How would I have known one if I saw one?" If your patients don’t know you’re a registered nurse, you’re doing something wrong. People who’ve been hospitalized recently tell me no one ever walked into the room and gave a name or title. They say they had no idea who was ultimately responsible for their care. No one came in and explained the plan of care for the shift or asked them if they had questions or needed anything in particular. They tell me they could see no distinction between the various people who walked into their rooms. No individual stood out as seeming in charge of the team. No nurse even had a name tag these patients could read. We can’t blame this on team nursing, short staffing, or managed care. Because the truth is, there’s always time to step into a room and introduce yourself as the nurse in charge of your patient’s care. If patients don’t know what nurses can do for them—if they aren’t sure what a nurse is or what a nurse can do—are consumers likely to demand that their hospitals have plenty of them? I don’t think so. No one besides nurses will tell patients or show patients what nursing can do. The only way the profession will thrive is if real patients have experiences with us that show them we are worth having around. All the HEDIS measures and report cards and "Best Hospitals" articles in national news magazines won’t mean a thing for nurses if families are leaving the hospital shaking their heads, wondering who was looking out for their mother or father. And what I’m hearing — and now seeing for myself — is that the life-sustaining crew at many hospitals today is nameless and seems to be trying to evade responsibility for the care rendered during its watch. Barbara
Bronson Gray, MN, RN |
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