2nd Week of Clinicals

Hello everyone,
I had a really productive week with my preceptor. I had the opportunity to attend an ER staff meeting on Tuesday. There were several initiatives discussed in the meeting. Some of them were the Door to Balloon time on STEMI patients. These are Cath Lab patients that are needing stents placed. DRMC's goal is 45 minutes and they actually had a door to balloon time of 28 minutes on Monday! That was exciting to hear. They are also implementing online scheduling. The staff can view the schedule on the internet, including in the privacy of the home. One of the biggest issues discussed was patient satisfaction scores. DRMC patient satisfaction score is currently below satisfaction and the new director (which is my preceptor) is actually implementing new ways new improve those scores. He discussed customer satisfaction, where the nurse acknowledges the patient by name when entering the room and then the nurse gives them their name, credentials, and years of experience. When patients are discharged the nurse thanks them for choosing DRMC in addition to giving them their discharge instructions. My preceptor stated there will be a lot of changes made in the ER department but they will be priortized and not done all at once. I also had the opportunity to assist my preceptor in done statistics paper on the ER holding patients and their holding time. It was quite interesting.
What I really admire about my preceptor is that he is a team player and a motivator. Due to the swine flu pandemic, the ER has been extremely busy. My preceptor was on the floor helping the nurses transport patients, putting triage patients into the computer, reassessing patients, etc. I have been an ER nurse for 9 years and I have never seen a director step in and help out the staff the way that he did. To give you another example, one of the nurses came to him and said they were out of cups and one of the patients was requesting some water. Instead of my preceptor delegating that task to someone, he told the nurse that he will go to the cafeteria and get some cups because the staff would be more useful staying in the ER to help the patients. I know this may sound like something minor but it spoke volume to me.
After interviewing my preceptor this week, I was sharing my thoughts about this course with my preceptor about how I am truly enjoying seeing the management side of nursing and it has really broaden my knowledge about why things are thing in the ER department (since I am an ER nurse) and the hospital organization. He stated that he had no clue about management and leadership when he graduated from the BSN program. He stated they only offered a leadership course and how he wish they offered clinicals for management in addition to the other clinicals. Looking forward to next week.