Necessary Change In Nursing

As we all may know, change is at times difficult to implement but at times necessary. In addition, we need to obtain value increasingly when we serve our patients. A little update on how we have been doing; our post-op success rate is down by 20% than in previous years largely due to increased length of stay from surgical wound infections. Recently, post-op recovery patients who normally recover in three days or less are recovering in six days or more due to the onset of infections in the surgical site. This drastically increases the length of stay and out-of-pocket expenses for our patients. This is unacceptable! Our goal is to decrease patient’s out-of-pocket expense, and length of stay while continuing to provide outstanding patient care in addition to a positive experience. There is a change that is necessary and very needful, in order to remain in the top ten hospitals in our region for successful surgeries and highest recovery rates. Having said that, the necessary change is administering a new antibiotic one hour prior to surgical procedures, which is also becoming a requirement and will be publicly reported on our hospital website. There are valid claims and concerns, but

“What could be done in the implementation that would relieve some of your worries?” As, for the pre-op nurse, she will be given a nursing assistant who will stock supplies, and assist in whatever capacity the per-op nurse deems necessary. All staff will be trained in the new antibiotic and the administering of it. Only the per-op nurse however, is to administer the antibiotic. As for the physician, the data for the wound infections are as stated earlier, and as you can see we need this change. This change is necessary, and like most changes, it may present some problems, but nothing we cannot handle as a team. Now, as for the issues, let us discuss