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The Olga diaries--a day in the life of Olga the
intern: Olga shares a hectic day in her nursing life, what with PDRP
peer review forms, Quality Team updates, Ministry Benchmarking
Indicators, working with a naive student and receiving the Wellness
Warrior of the Month Award.
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| Subject: |
Nurses
(Beliefs, opinions and attitudes) Nurses (Practice) |
| Author: | Cottingham, Chris |
| Pub Date: | 05/01/2012 |
| Publication: | Name: Kai Tiaki: Nursing New Zealand Publisher: New Zealand Nurses' Organisation Audience: Trade Format: Magazine/Journal Subject: Health; Health care industry Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2012 New Zealand Nurses' Organisation ISSN: 1173-2032 |
| Issue: | Date: May, 2012 Source Volume: 18 Source Issue: 4 |
| Topic: | Event Code: 200 Management dynamics |
| Product: | Product Code: 8043100 Nurses NAICS Code: 621399 Offices of All Other Miscellaneous Health Practitioners |
| Geographic: | Geographic Scope: New Zealand Geographic Code: 8NEWZ New Zealand |
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| Accession Number: | 290856199 |
| Full Text: |
From time to time the Te Henga Nursing Red Brigades publish diaries
to exemplify nursing life. This is one of those times. Here is an
extract from the diary of Olga the Intern. Thank you Olga! Dear Diary 0700: To work for morning shift. A little tired from staying up to complete Peer Review Forms for colleagues' PDRP Portfolios after afternoon shift. But Occ Health assures us two hours' sleep is optimal for nurses, according to research. Occ Health personnel need eight hours, managers too, according to the same research. Once again, think how lucky we are to have access to Evidence-Based Practice principles. Handover a quick one today to allow our Quality Team to present an update on the 'Naming the People we Serve' Project. The Project Leader tells us the NPSP Consultants have found a marked preference from patients to be called, er, well, patients. Team Leader says that Ministry of Health will now progress to Stage 2 of the Project to access key stakeholders across a broad base, moving forward, including Iwi groupings and Pasifika, to allow patients ownership of the MoH Output Projections, by which 80 per cent of patients will name themselves using MoH approved identifiers. Agnes the Ancient Nurse asked what that meant. The Quality Team Leader said she understood if'Reluctant Adopters' had difficulty with such cutting-edge innovations, and it was exactly this kind of thinking that had resulted in Agnes doing 18 months of night shift. 0830: Move Emergency Clinic (EC) "overnighters" back to EC. Stewart the Student asked what was the point, the darling naive boy. Interrupted data entry activity [setting up the Dietary Actualisation Programme for the day] to explain that EC patients came to our ward overnight so they weren't in breach of the MoH "six-hour rule". After they'd been discharged from the EC, they could be admitted as new patients for another six hours. Stewart said he thought that, while this was smart, could it be just a little ethically dubious. I explained again that the supreme ethical measure was meeting MoH Benchmarking Indicators, and what did they teach them in the universities these days, and would he, maybe, like some supervision later this evening, my flatmate Louise the Lecturer being away at a conference at the moment? 1000: The Te Pou team arrived to provide an Inservice on the "Wellness for the Wealthy" initiative. This is a "Partnership Programme" contributing to the "Mental Health for the Middle Classes" strategy. It was fabulous to see them. We took the opportunity and asked them for advice on how to manage Tom, who had to be restrained as he thought the CV line was being used to insert even more muslim microchips into his body in an effort to turn him into a Jihadist suicide bomber. He'd torn out five lines so far. The Te Pou people said that their brief was to offer advice to the DHB executive and we should be careful we didn't contravene the Restraint Minimisation requirements. Then they left rather quickly, leaving us some signed photos of themselves for the nurses' tearoom and a John Kirwan Depression DVD. Note to self: watch JK DVD tonight with Stewart. He looks a little sad. 1130: Nursing Assistant Nathalie reports that the new patient in Room 2 looks like she could be 'coloured'. Nathalie is from South Africa. We've got used to her little ways. I had to interrupt updating the Local Key Performance Benchmarking Data Indicators to explain the procedure. She needs to establish from the Patient Information Programme what ethnicity Room 2 could be and then run this through the Cultural Safety Screening Tool--all available on the DHB new Compusystem. She will then know how to greet her appropriately. We must be respectful at all times to meet MoH Standard 4.06 and 5.12. Everybody knows that, even she, I told her. Nathalie said she doesn't have a logon yet and Room 2 seemed upset. I told her [you have to do everything!] that she really does need to prioritise her work and accessing our computer programmes would seem, wouldn't it, to be slightly important? I reminded her that a South African medical degree with a PhD in physiology didn't mean a lot unless she could adapt to her present circumstances. And get local registration. 1330: What an exciting time I've had! The DHB Management Group awarded me the "Wellness Warrior of the Month" Award. I had my photo taken for HEALTH HEADLINES, the DHB monthly with the lovely portrait of the CEO. The CEO couldn't be there, being called away to an urgent conference in Paris, but the Chief Operating Officer interrupted his negotiations with the consortium wanting to help us out with building the new "strictly-for-profit" surgical unit in the hospital gardens to present the award and have his photo taken with me. 1700: Home after sorting out that unfortunate incident after the cleaning staff all got dismissal notices that the HR Department [motto--Efficiency and Humanity!] meant to send to the gardeners. Harm reduction has taken on a whole new meaning. Reflecting on the day, I realise that nursing really does mean making a difference, don't you think? Chris Cottingham, RN, BA, MEd, DipSocSci, PGDip (Hlth Sri), is a staff nurse working for a district health board that prefers not to be identified. In his spare time, he writes a bi-monthly column of alternative (sometimes amusing or irreverent but always challenging) musings on our profession. |
| Gale Copyright: | Copyright 2012 Gale, Cengage Learning. All rights reserved. |