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"Gwynn, I discovered
that I was the only person on-call last night! I worked a full-eight
hours yesterday, and I saw five patients. I cannot be the only one on
call when I've already put in a full day! I was called out for two
patients, and I had to pronounce a death. I only got three hours of
sleep. I can't go on like this; it's killing me. I hate my job, and it
certainly isn't good for the patients. My hands are shaking, I
feel nauseous, and I just can't do this any more. I'm sorry, but you can
consider this my two-weeks notice. I've got another offer, I'm going to
take it. I can work three days a week, day-shift, and make as much as I
do working all week here, with no forced overtime."
Gwynn Halsey looked across
her desk at Lisa Deering, a bright, hard-working RN with a genuine
commitment to her patients. "I understand," said Gwynn Halsey. "We'll be
sorry to see you go."
Lisa stood, gave Gwynn a
half-smile, shook her hand, and closed the door behind her. That
wasn't the only door Gwynn felt close. The hospital was already closing
beds in units due to the lack of nurses. She wasn't likely to get much
sympathy if she complained about her problems as director of home-care.
She certainly wasn't going to get any nurses from them. Something had to
change from within, and it had to be affordable.
She called Nancy Gilman,
her administrative assistant in and explained what had happened with
Lisa. To her surprise, Nancy began bubbling with enthusiasm before she
even finished her story.
"This is probably the
right time to mention something I've been thinking about for a long
time. You know how many complaints I've had from our on-call staff over
the past several months. Well, I've been doing some checking. We can
actually send our on-calls to a medical answering service and stop relying on the hospital's switchboard. Our staff can enter
their individual call-schedules online and they can even contact one another
directly over the phone, without waiting for the switchboard to mediate.
We don't have to worry about lost on-call phones and we can see to it
that there aren't oversights, leaving only one person on-call."
"Nancy," Gwynn
interrupted, "you know that's going to cost money. And, its money we
don't have."
"Actually," Nancy replied
quickly, "we are already paying the hospital a fee to cover our
calls. We can switch to the answering service for substantially less."
"You're sure?" Gwynn
asked.
"I've got the
agreement in my
desk. I've been a little reluctant to bring it up. I just kept getting these calls, with people yelling at me about the on-call schedule
being messed up. I
wanted to see if there was anything we could do differently. By the time
they talk to you you, they've already taken their initial frustration
out on me and have calmed down."
"Do you know anything
about this medical answering service? Are you sure they can actually live up to their
promises?" Gwynn asked her.
"I don't know.
But, we do know that the
hospital switchboard isn't working, that’s for sure. I actually got the
idea in a conversation with Cathy over at Hospice. She recommended them. They've
been using an answering service for years, since their initial budget cut. She said nobody
wanted to change, but in the end, it worked a lot better than passing
the on-call cell phone around. Now everybody knows what’s going on, when, and why.
"Actually, she had
some other good ideas too, like using part-time mothers who want like to
maintain their clinical skills, but work a limited amount, as a stable
on-call staff. She said that they’ve got two nurses like that already.
The primary nurses only cover call when these part-timers are on
vacation or ill. She said they're now fully staffed, mostly due to
giving people their lives back."
"Let's take a look
at the information," Gwynn said. "We just can't lose anymore good nurses."
Learn more about telephone
answering services and discover how they might be able to help you.
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