When someone asks you about your workday, how often do you respond “busy,” “crazy” or “absolutely nuts”? It’s commonly known nurses are among the busiest and hardest working professionals in the industry.
But, while much of your job requires the ability to thrive in a fast-paced environment, there are plenty of timesaving tricks to help you make the most of each day. Here are our top five recommendations of timesavers:
“To cure sometimes, to relieve often, to comfort always.”
This quote, often attributed to Hippocrates, perfectly summarizes the mission statement of physicians worldwide. You strive, everyday, to cure ailments and relieve your patients’ symptoms, but success in these areas often depends on factors beyond your control. Relieving anxiety through patient comfort measures, on the other hand, is always within your power.
Unfortunately, in an effort to treat patients efficiently, and free up bed space, patient comfort sometimes falls to the wayside. Although you may have every intention of providing your patients with a comfortable experience, your ultimate goal is likely to treat as many people as possible within each shift.
While implementing additional patient care methods to your work as a doctor seems counterproductive to your goal of treating as many people as possible, there are plenty of methods to ensure patient comfort without adding to care time or impacting efficiency. Here are our top three suggestions:
As a child life specialist, when you’re called to a patient’s room, you never know what awaits on the other side of the door. In some cases, your services are needed to help calm the nerves of a toddler before she receives a vaccine. In other cases, you may walk in to find a hysterical child and his equally terrified parents. Sometimes you can bring a situation under control in a matter of minutes, but some take much, much longer.
Most of us are accustomed to seeing customer experience surveys from businesses like cable companies, retailers and automotive service centers. Days after you’ve purchased a product or paid for a service, you’ve probably received an email or automated phone call asking you to rank your satisfaction and share your comments. For many years, businesses have relied on customer feedback to measure success and improve processes. Today, however, you’ll begin seeing surveys from an unlikely source: your hospital.
For patients of any age, a trip to the hospital can be uncomfortable. However, for pediatric patients, it can be especially traumatic. In addition to the reason for their visit, which is likely stressful on its own, they’re introduced to an environment full of unusual sights and sounds. Depending on their age, they may have unpleasant memories of previous hospital visits. Not to mention, television shows and movies don’t exactly portray hospitals as a bright and cheerful space.
