1-14-10

I had a post earlier this month, but who knows where it went? Like much of my life, I'm wonder where it went. I guess it is in cyberspace somewhere.LOL

Today I entered another phase of work. I attended a Magnet meeting. Evidently we will meet once a month for 2 hours for the next two years. The goal is to help the hospital get recredited as a Magnet Hospital. This is all about the nurses, as Magnet status means that we are a great place to work, with self governance, etc. What is doesn't mean is that we are well paid or well taken care of by our employer, or well treated by doctors. That would be nice. However, we do have some great doctors, I'm happy to say.

Back to the meeting. I'm not sure why I was asked to attend, participate in the meeting...new blood - that's my theory. I'm not sure how much I will want to, be able to, am willing to contribute to the process. It will make me better known in the hospital (is that good?)

To tell you the truth, I'm still often overwhelmed and scared by what I do at work. Sometimes I just feel like I don't know anything about my job and I lack the confidence to make a difference. Sometimes I feel great about what I do. If only I could get the IV's started the first time ALL the time! sigh.

Back to the meeting. Okay, it was my day off, and I had to leave at 8 to be there by 9. I was there until 11:30 and home again after 12. I'm working on the committee that helps to put the paperwork together for the magnet organization to review to see whether or not we qualify for Magnet status in 2012. We need 8 quarters of data, which means they are collecting info from the 3th and 4th quarters of 2009 and continuing on through the middle of 2011. Last time the book was 300 pages thick! Hopefully it will be shorter this time.

Interesting side note: The visitation for Magnet last time (which was the first time) was while I was a student at this hospital, so I remember it well. It's a strange thing, to have had a tiny part in it.

Anyway, one of the goals this month is to come up with a theme for the process. Since all the nurses are to be a part of this, they want something that will encourage participation. The idea of a journey has been presented. Like a nurse on rollerskates (not sure the symbolim of that?) or a train (last time it was ..."get on board") or some other mode of transportation.

My thoughts today brought me to the quote by Ghandi "You need to BE the change you wish to see in the world" I like BE THE CHANGE, but so do a lot of other organizations. This has nothing to do with transportation, but I still like it. I like lots of inspirational quotes. Seems like we could find something amoung them?

Rollerskates? "Get a roll on", "Rolling along"???

Or, the other thing I thought of was "Caring for Life" as a nursing theme....since that is what we do, who we are. Um, I was trying. We'll see what comes about for next month.

My last concern was that so much of the time we were talking about what we can do to get our overall satisfaction up at the hospital as measured by HCAPs. And I'm thinking, what is it that the #1 hospital does that we don't do (we are #131). What do they do differently from us? That is where I want to look. Can we emulate them?

So I've ordered a new book from Amazon called The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawandi. I'm interested to see what he has to say about what we do in the hospital and who we can improve our processes. Maybe next month I will bring up something from his book and pass on the idea of simply using checklists to improve outcomes? We'll see.