One of the ways to improve patient satisfaction is hourly rounding. Each hour, the nurse should enter the patient’s room and assess for the5 P’s:

• Position - does the patient need to be turned? Are they in the right position for their specific disease process? Can they reach the call button/lights/remote without danger of falling?
• Pain - assess for pain every hour ->  quality, radiates anywhere, severity, time 
• Potty - does the patient need to go to the restroom? Need to be changed? Do they have a foley? If so is it in the correct position? Kinks? Need to be emptied?
• Possessions - does the patient have the things they are supposed to? Are they in reach? Are cell phones charging in sockets designated for pumps or other equipment?
• Pump - Do the IV bags need to be changes? Lines? Is it charging? Ringing alarms of pumps can be distracting to the patient and the staff.

I just completed my first day of Leadership. Here are some thoughts before I take a bath and get some work done:

• I’m going to do research for an in-service on “soft” bedside shift reports to convince the nursing director whether or not to implement the practice. Look for updates here.
• They want me to work the night shift for my Capstone preceptorship (insert crazy gif here of a woman screaming or passing out with terror)
• I thought nurses were incredibly hard workers, but I was floored today to see how INSANE the job of a nurse manager is—this woman spent all day jumping from meeting to meeting while spending any transit time putting out fires and all the while staying completely calm and poised. I have a lot to learn.

Thoughts? Does your site do warm hand-offs?

“The integration of the best evidence available, nursing expertise, and the values and preferences of the individual’s, families and communities who are served. This assumes that optimal nursing care is provided when nurses and health care decision makers have access to a synthesis of the latest research, a consensus of expert opinion, and are thus able to exercise their judgement as they plan and provide care that takes into account cultural and personal values and preferences.”
Sigma Theta Tau International

Starting my LAST semester of nursing school tomorrow!! I can’t believe it, seems like I just started. I can’t wait to be an RN, and to continue to share this amazing journey with everyone!

I feel like such a jerk! I was just browsing through the nursing tags and I saw someone complain about APA and realized that I have never shared my class’ trick for APA.

If you haven’t already, I HIGHLY recommend you buy a kind of software like this as it has save my butt throughout nursing school. You pay a one time fee of around $28 and it formats EVERYTHING. You have to have a certain kind of Word I think so read the webpage, but it does all your margins/cover pages/in text citations/references pages/etc. It’s super easy to use and best yet, it saves ALL your references in a database so that you can get them for any paper if you need them again.

For those of you who say $28 is too much, you can actually share the download with I think three people total so you can split it either between computers or among friends. We all use it, and it updates as the APA changes versions. Since I got it, I have yet to be marked down on an APA paper. I used to dread writing papers all because I hated doing references, etc.

Okay no more sounding like a commercial. Sorry for not sharing earlier.