EVENT PLANNING GUIDE Celebrate & Recognize your Special Week This Planning Guide is your source for celebrations and recognition of dedicated staff. These ideas promoteteambuilding and generate a sense of pride in your profession. It does not take a large budget or drain resources to plan, in fact spreading good news helps productivity and work satisfaction! First Steps Decide the theme. Start your search on-line. Many national recognition weeks have annual themes with a media kit including downloadable graphics. But if this year’s theme isn’t your style, create your own, or use a previous year. The theme will provide a direction for planning events, theme colors, promotional items and decorations. Get help from coworkers. Form a small committee to help plan and divide the work. Getting others to help will increase the overall participation in the events planned. Plan early. Order any items or make favors at least two weeks in advance. Also if your festivities include the community start making those calls early so they can save the date. Activity Guide Enter the Celebration Announce your celebration to everyone who enters with a colorful balloon arch. Decorate your entrances with Balloons during the Week and plan a photo outside on the 1st day of the event inviting local media for the photo opportunity. Make the photo something
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In May, 2018 a nurse working at a Wisconsin nursing home was charged with 11 felony and misdemeanor charges. The charges were: intentionally subjecting an individual at risk to abuse, theft, imitation of a controlled substance, possession of narcotic drugs and obtaining a prescription drug with fraud. According to the criminal complaint: A nurse training with the accused nurse witnessed her diverting narcotics. The nurse trainee said that when he worked with the accused nurse, patients complained of pain even after the nurse gave them their medication. But when training with other nurses, the trainee said the same residents were not complaining of pain after receiving pain medication. The accused nurse was brought into the DON office and admitted to diverting narcotics but didn’t state the amount of drugs she took or how long she had been doing it. The accused told the nursing director that she gave the narcotics to her son because he is an addict and becomes violent toward her. An investigation showed that instead of giving residents scheduled doses of hydrocodone or Percocet, the accused nurse was giving them Tylenol. The accused nurse was in charge of the narcotics cart, and all medications were signed off and dispensed by her to the nurses for administering to the patients. The Director of Nursing reported the theft to
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5 Tips to reduce Med Errors More than 60% of medication errors are caused by poor communication. The first step in reducing medication errors should be promoting effective communication among physicians, pharmacists and nurses. When in doubt, nurses need to be confident and ask questions. A quick call to the pharmacy can be a valuable resource for nurses to clarify a doctor’s order. The Joint Commission and the Institute for Safe Medication Practices have published a list of high-alert medications. These high risk medications include potassium chloride, insulin, IV pain drugs and blood thinners. Errors can occur at any point in the healthcare system. Acknowledging that errors happen, learning from them and working to prevent future errors is a shift from blame and punishment to analysis of causes of errors and making changes to improve. 5 tips for long-term care facilities Know the 5’R’s Inform patients of the reason for all medications Work as a team with doctors and pharmacists Be confident in questioning medication orders Report medication errors Right Time Right Patient Right Medicine Right Dose Right Route
The NHA & DON Relationship Making the best of an “Arranged Marriage” The Administrator and Director of Nurses coupling can be a decision made by management or circumstances beyond your control. Like an arranged marriage, you need to work to make the relationship successful. The power of a cohesive Administrator and Director of Nursing is a force to be reckoned with and a great example to the entire staff. When the opposite is true the results are disastrous. Nothing can cause a survey to take a nosedive into IJ’s than a NHA and DON that are not on the same page, or worse playing the “blame game”. Tips to strengthen this key relationship resemble marriage counseling. All relationships thrive on open and honest communication. Talking several times a day face to face (texting doesn’t count) will quickly improve any relationship. Making rounds together not only improves communication and operations, it will show strong leadership to coworkers. It is expected that there will be times of stress while working together. The Administrator and Director of Nursing do not always have the same priorities and don’t agree on everything. The worst reaction to disagreements is to stop communication. If you have every walked into work, wanting to be anywhere else because of a personality conflict, that is your signal to reopen
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