All Entries Tagged With: "nurse manager role"
Learning patient satisfaction from the Ritz
Yet another company outside the field of healthcare has offered its services to teach hospitals something about customer service and excellence. Of course, the customers in healthcare are patients, and taking care of them is different than taking care of customers.
Still, we’ve seen Disney offering lessons to healthcare institutions, and now the Ritz-Carlton. Erlanger Health System in Chattanooga, TN, signed a $388,000 contract with the Ritz to help the hospital change its culture to service excellence.
What do you think? Is this a passing fad? Or is this the beginning to really focusing on patient satisfaction and service excellence in healthcare?
Source: Tami Swartz, Patient Safety Monitor Blog
Best practices for filling out incident reports
Incidents reports are a pain to fill out, but vital for documenting what happened and protecting yourself and your staff. This week, Patricia A. Duclos-Miller, MS, RN, CNA, BC, provides some best practices.
You and your staff may think that incident reports are more trouble than they are worth-but think again.
We work in high-stress, fast-paced environments. It is your responsibility as a member of the nursing management team to understand not only the importance of the incident report, but also how to ensure that your staff completes them and how to investigate incidents to avoid any further occurrences. Your investigation will also provide possible defense if during your investigation you identify a system failure and take the necessary corrective action(s).
The purpose of the incident report is to refresh the memories of both the nurse manager/supervisor and the staff nurse. While the clinical record is patient-focused, the incident report is incident-focused. The benefit to you and your staff is that years after the event, the incident report will help you and the persons involved remember what happened. [more]
Manager tip of the month: Be a good boss
Bob Sutton, a professor at Stanford University, is the author of the book Good Boss, Bad Boss. He reminds us of the balancing act related to being effective while also being respected in a leadership role. During his podcast “How to be the best boss”, he reveals the following considerations:
- You must combine competence with compassion.
- Many leaders are out of tune with what it is like to work for them! Get feedback from your staff.
- Long term loyalty is your goal.
- Your enemies “lie in wait,” waiting to crush you – be alert.
- The skill of being a best boss is learned over time – it is a “craft.”
- Listen to staff and encourage them to be engaged in dealing with conflict.
- Be respectful of differing opinions.
- Understand the work that the people you lead actually do.
Listen to this free podcast at: http://www.bnet.com/blog/management/how-to-be-the-best-boss-useful-commute-podcast/3077?promo=665&tag=nl.e665
Visit Shelley’s website, Health Resources Unlimited.
Take a vacation: Why nurse leaders need time off
By Marsha Egan, CPCU, PCC, ICF
You’re more likely to get burned if you don’t spend some time outside the hospital walls this summer. Burnout is a leading downfall for many busy nurse managers, but here’s one way to prevent it.
Take a vacation! Even if you only have a couple days, it’s vital to maximize your R&R.
Being a nurse leader is not easy and comes with a lot of responsibility, but even you can beat the heat of job stress with the following vacation strategies.
Take the time: Even if you haven’t racked up enough hours for a week-long vacation, make time for a mini vacation. Use the weekend or two days in a row that you have off to take trip to a friend’s or family member’s house to relax.
Plan it out: Plan your vacation months ahead of time. It can be almost as gratifying just thinking about an upcoming trip as it will be to actually take it. Also, it will help get you through stressful times when you know you have something fun coming up. Put up reminders that you’ll see every day. Mark the trip on the calendar, put a picture of the beach you’re going to in your purse or wallet, and make the background of your computer something you’re excited to see on your trip.
Four basic rules for engaging direct-care nurses in quality improvement
To engage direct-care nurses, nurse leaders need to follow four basic rules:
1. Be transparent with your staff at all times
2. Make accountability for improvement at the unit and staff nurse levels
3. Give your staff the tools to succeed
4. Continually reward and recognize improvement
Here is a more in-depth look at each of the four basic rules. [more]
New findings say progress means more than recognition
A new report in the Harvard Business Review contradicts the idea that employees value recognition of their efforts higher than anything else. Amabile and Kramer write that the top motivator of performance is progress.
The study involved gathering more than 12,000 e-mail diary entries from the participants, which revealed that making progress in one’s work, no matter how little or big, is associated with positive emotions and high motivation. The survey notes when participants experienced progress in their jobs, 76% of people reported it as their best day. [more]
Nominate a star for the HCPro 2010 Nursing Image Awards
Do you know a fellow nurse that goes above and beyond the call of duty and want to find a way to honor their achievements in the field? What about a nurse manager who had a positive affect on your experience as a nurse? Do you want to show your appreciation, but don’t know how? Now you can, by nominating them for HCPro’s 2010 Nursing Image Awards!
The award honors nurses whose leadership, teamwork, or clinical expertise embodies an image of nursing excellence and contributes to improving patient care, quality outcomes, nurse satisfaction, and the healthcare environment.
There are two categories nominees are eligible for, the image of nursing in leadership and the image of nursing in clinical practice. An individual or team of nurses and a nursing leader will receive an award for each category.
The deadline for nominations is July 31, 2010, but why wait? Click here to nominate your favorite nurse or nurse leader today!
Winners will be announced in October at the HCPro Nursing Leadership Summit in Orlando.
Nurse liability: Keeping you and your staff educated and aware
As a nurse manager, you have many legal concerns. Not only must you be concerned with your own liability, but you must also stay alert about the liability risks of the nurses working under your supervision.
Although some liability risks are universal to all nursing practice areas, certain clinical settings also generate liability risks. As the nurse manager, being knowledgeable and educating your staff about universal liability risks and those specific to a practice area will increase the quality of care provided and reduce liability.
Some universal liability risks include the following:
- Failure to communicate patient’s condition to other healthcare professionals
- While a patient is hospitalized, his/her condition must be monitored continually and evaluated. Pertinent physical findings must be reported promptly to the healthcare professionals involved in the patient’s care. [more]
Correlating study tips with learning styles
It can be helpful for adult learners to identify their own learning style so they can determine study strategies that work best for them. The main types of learning styles are:
• Right brain
• Left brain
• Auditory
• Visual
• Tactile
What kind of learner are you? Visit www.StrategiesForNurseManagers.com to download a free tool to assess your auditory, visual, and tactile learning preferences. You can also use this tool to assess others’ learning styles as well.
Setting expectations for accountability with staff
Nurse managers are in one of the most difficult roles in any organization. They must manage nursing units while supervising, leading, and mentoring nursing staff.
To be effective managers and to promote the organization’s goals of patient safety, patient satisfaction, and high-quality care, nurse managers rely on staff nurses to provide excellent patient care and to follow the organization’s policies and procedures. [more]
