knowledge management

I was charging tonight so this is the first time I have been able to post. :( My group member and I have met, and I think that I need info from Amanda and Lacy reguarding the patient satisfaction survey numbers, etc. Although I can get some of the information from last year from my evaluation. If anyone has any ideas or thoughts, I would love to hear them!!

Katie- Staffing and Staff engagement

Hello again everyone, Rhonda and I are working on the staffing section.  We have reviewed this section, and beleive that we should be able to answer most of the questions by talking with a few of the charge nurses on the unit.  However, I have come up with a few questions:
For Lacy and Amanda- 
1. How does the unit account for different seasonal fluctuations?
2. How do we evaluate the effectiveness/appropriateness of our staffing decisions?

For the staff survey:
1. Do you think (on average/most days) the unit is adequately staffed?
2. Do you feel that you are adequately trained/qualified to care for the patients assigned to you?
3. During a difficult and or rotating patient assignment, what ways do management, charge nurses, and other staff nurses intervene to help with patient loads?

I'm sure there are many different ways to better word these questions, and I am very open to all suggestions.  Thanks everyone!

Unit Profile/Patient Outcomes

Courtney and I are working on the Unit profile and Patient Outcomes, Questions we would like to include in the staff survey are:

1. Education level
2. CCRN (yes or no)
3. What are key factors that affect staff satisfaction

We will need Amanda and Lacy's direction on where to find patient outcomes.

I am working on Evidence-based practice and processes with Fred. There are 7 specific questions that we are looking. I was working on the first question-How do leaders ensure policies and procedures and protocols used in the unit are based on nationally recognized evidence,standards and best practices? I think VAP and a lot of the SCIP stuff is working toward this.. Catheter assoc infection and how we prevent control it, wounds and foleys and prophylactic abx. There is a lot of info out there I am still going thru. The 2nd question re culture we have poster inservices, P&I studies twice a year with the SWATT team. I have some info for each question but will need further confirming input from the office.Like sources of evidence used based on pt population per question 1. Do we have data collection specific to sicu? At the face to face meeting next month I will be quicker at explaining than typing-not my strong point.

Unit Profile

I'm also working tomorrow, so here's my contribution. :) Emily & I are working on the unit profile/outcomes sections. We can submit pictures with our application, especially those that highlight special things about our unit. Here's our list so far (please add ideas in the comments if you have any thoughts!):

• huddle
• report
• charge nurse report
• staff meetings
• specialty procedures (bronch, line insertion, Swan insertion, etc)
• Annual comps

Of course, all of this will be keeping patient confidentiality in mind.

I will be bringing my camera up to work for a while to try to capture as many things as possible. I'd love to get a ton of photos so we can really have a choice in what we put in our application. We do have a file size limitation, so we can't put in everything, but should be able to get some great things!

Thursday Meeting...

Hey guys I work tomorrow so I will not be able to post during the day so I decided I would post tonight. When Cari and I got together the other day we wanted to see if anyone had any input on one of our questions. One of our questions is "How are unit leaders trained to meet the responsibilities of their role? How are they held accountable?" We listed leaders such as charge nurses, preceptors etc. and came up with ways they are held accountable but our question is how our the managers/directors meaning Amanda and Lacy trained to meet the responsibilities of their role and they are held accountable. If anyone has any feedback on this we would greatly appreciate it. If not we would like to submit this question into the group of questions to Amanda and Lacy.

We also were wondering if we are still making a survey for the unit to get feedback. If so we would like to submit a question for the survey. Our question is "What recognition programs are currently in place in our unit that are most important to staff?" Maybe that isn't the best wording but hopefully that gets my point across.

Anyways thanks for all the help. Look forward to the posts!

One more assignment

Hey guys, in addition to making a list of questions that should be addressed in the employee survey, we need to make a list of questions that we will need Amanda and Lacy's help with. Instead of all of us asking questions at different times, we can give them one list of things we either need them to answer, or need to know where to find the answer.

To answer the rumor mill about open visitation - yes, when the CICU applied, they were told open visitiation was a requirement during a phone call they had. They applied before the application was updated, and I have yet to find any absolute on required visitation hours. Where this impacts us, may be on what level of Beacon Award we can achieve. If we all want, we can email/call the AACN and see what they say.

This is a test

Just making sure I understand this blog input. I too have heard concern re open visiting but I believe the application info is new and that is not part of the requirement anymore.