Jul

30

CMW Tip of the Week: Learn to enhance relationships with nursing staff

By Case Management Weekly

This week’s tip comes from Linda O’Neil, RN, BSN, CCM, director of care management at Mercy Hospital in Bakersfield, CA.

One thing I have found is my case managers often become the “go to” person for the nursing staff on the floors (my case managers have offices near the nurses’ station on each floor.) To enhance this relationship, we have interdisciplinary rounds each morning in the case manager’s office at 0900. This process involves the case manager, the nurse manager for the floor, the charge nurse, and the nursing staff. The RNs come into the office one at a time and give a report on their five patients. This is not the standard shift change report. This report requires the RN to state only why each patient needs to be in the hospital on that day. If he or she doesn’t know, the case manager can explain why the patient should or should not be at this level of care.

The case managers have been asked to be extra friendly and helpful to the staff when they are teaching them some of the criteria they need to know. This process tends to cement the relationship between the case mangers and the floor staff. An added side benefit is that after a few weeks of this process, the staff nurses start coming into the case managers’ offices and telling them a particular patient really doesn’t meet criteria and needs to be moved to a lower level of care.

Have a tip you’d like to share? Or maybe a question for our experts? Email it to editor jmcginley@hcpro.com.Your thoughts could be featured in the next issue of Case Management Weekly!