Week 1 Following SH

This week I was able to follow SH to several meetings.

The longest concerned creating an action plan to efectively manage the FLU victims and our overloaded, understaffed Emergency Department (ED). Last weekend, they were 6 nurses short in the ED. They were able to open 1/5 of their available rooms. Children's Medical Center was full and diverting to us. Baylor was also full and not accepting diverted patients. Medical City had to stop accepting diversions because we were already over capacity before noon on Friday.

The VP of the Women and Children's Center (JO) wanted to use the PACU on weekends to hold a "Flu Clinic" where flu victims could be triaged and cared for quickly without further burdening the ED. SH and JO discussed many options about how to care for our patients and staff members to achieve a mutually acceptable goal. JO is over the children's side of the ED, while SH is over the PACU. Both have staffing deficiencies and empty spaces because of the lack of staff to care for the patients. Neither thought they could stress their staff further by calling weekday staff in on the weekends to care for the flu victims in the temporary clinic location. Finally they agreed to ask their mutual staff members for volunteers to work on weekends to relieve the ED of this burden and agreed they would receive a critical need bonus to compensate these willing staff members for their time.

It was interesting to see these Nursing VP's request aide from other departments instead of burdening their own staff further. I was also impressed that neither wanted to randomly agree to staff the impromptu clinic by mandate, they instead chose to ask the staff for volunteers and to pay them for their help.

The other main meeting entailed creating a presentation for the upcoming city forums. SH will be co-presenting the building plans and fiscal responsibilities of the hospital. We have been taking pictures of the construction areas to give the staff a preview of the soon-to-be-open areas. She made many phone calls to different departments looking for data on our growing departments to be able to highlight their successes at the forum publically.

I enjoy watching the projects come together. SH is very positive about her responsibilities. She has several health issues and is not able to perform bedside nursing, so she takes supporting "her nurses" from behind the scenes very seriously. SH is encouraging me to attain my Masters degree to be prepared for the day when I am no longer able to do surgery every day. She always leaves me with Food for Thought!