Save time with 'admission folder'
Save time with 'admission folder'
Searching for various forms needed for patients being admitted from the ED was a constant frustration for nurses at Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis. To solve this problem, the ED nurses created an "admission folder" with everything needed to complete an admission, such as a list of the patient's property and allergy bracelets.
"Before the folder, nurses had to look in a dozen different places for all the required paperwork. How frustrating!" says Mary J. Ross, RN, BSN, CEN, a charge nurse in the ED.
Members of the ED nursing staff love them, Ross says. "It has made a tremendous difference and was such an easy and quick fix," she says.
An admission checklist also is included in the folder, used by nurses as a guideline for doing admissions. Nurses often were aggravated searching for forms for conscious sedation, surgery consents, suicide precautions, alcohol withdrawal, and restraint, so they decided to put them all in a single file cabinet for "one-stop shopping," she says. "So often we are required to keep this record and that record. The list goes on and on. It was impossible to keep these forms stocked," Ross explains.
The admission checklist includes:
- Complete the billing form, using computer generated form when possible.
- Complete the admission form.
- Complete the patient's property list.
- Check that patient has either blue "no allergy" band or yellow allergy band.
- Verify patient's identification band.
- Compare the assigned bed to the physician order.
- Review orders for stat orders, timed orders, antibiotics, enoxaparin/heparin orders, Accu-Chek, and insulin.
- Verify that orders are entered into the computerized system.
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