Healthcare Transformation is a core priority of SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania. Bringing together workers and management to identify and solve problems through collaboration improves care and makes our healthcare system the best it can be.
Project: Improve Medication Pass Efficiency
Problem: During morning med-pass, nurses are often interrupted to respond to non-emergency phone calls. Nurses need to lock med cart and walk long distances to answer phone calls, resulting in more time wasted with unnecessary motion. Resident satisfaction decreases as they wait for medications and care is interrupted, posing an increased potential for errors during med pass.
Intervention: Receptionist taking calls for nurses and telling callers that nurses are doing med pass between 8:00 am and 10:00 am and will take message. When supervisors are done with morning meeting they go to the receptionist to pick up messages and take them to the nurse’s station. Nurses answer and return call after med pass.
Outcomes:
Since implementing this system, nurses have saved 25 min on morning medication pass and allows nurses to care for their residents and answer their questions without interruption. Nurses report less stress, which leads to better care for residents. This system also decreases potential for medication errors because of consistent, uninterrupted care. Receptionist also has noticed that the calls between 8:00 am and 10:00 am have decreased with callers knowing that nurses are passing meds.