Ct tech is now onsite ( most weekday evenings) till 11:30pm!!

THIS IS GOOD! I see Kersti already posted a post in the SMMH sleep room with this! haha!! I just edited to say weekdays!

If they are onsite on the weekday you don’t need to call radiology to protocol CT’S or approve them until after 9 pm!!

Still fill out a req for contrast studies and follow same weekend policy at present.

If a patient is waiting a surgical consult and you need the space in the ER then consider sending the patient to wait ( and/or be monitored) in the recovery room during our reno’s!! Nursing Manager has agreed to this and COS confirmed this today with me!! Another way to alleviate congestion maybe!!

Anyone else have recent examples of tests being ordered outside of any directive? I had extended lytes preordered by nursing this am and a d -dimer pre-ordered by nursing on sunday. I didn’t want either of these things done! waste of money and I and I didn’t want results.

I spoke to both nurses in SMMH about these issues and spoke to the nursing manager too. Is this only happening to me? as Manager wants to know if nurses are repeatedly working outside their scope.

Please email me or text me, within the next week, if you have examples or a concern about this and I will take either no concerns or concerns back to the manager.

Reminder to write PIA times on all charts along with your name as attending. Our misses on this are rising again and health records requires this information!

Reminder to write orders ( if you are doing) and move patents to the floor ( or final disposition) as soon as you know admitting. Even if this is before you have all testing back! Make sure to just handover what is outstanding to the MRP ! Again…helps reduce ED LOS and bottlenecks in patient movement.

Please consider protocoling and getting CT’s running to coincide with day staff arrival for patients you are holding overnight for CT. Example: a patient that needs a CT abdo and needs oral contrast should be starting their contrast at 6:30-7am! Likewise if you have more than one patient waiting for CT to arrive in the morning… then maybe you should consider calling in CT (on call) to expedite care and try to minimize bottlenecks in care. With our reduced capacity bottlenecks are gonna have a much bigger impact and this is more way to reduce ED LOS for patients.

Ultrasound – if waiting overnight then make sure your req is in and communicate with the ultrasound tech as early as 7:30am ( on their arrival) to see when they can do that ED ultrasound.

DI leadership and Dr Chait are aware of these issues.

If you want to talk more about this pls let me know.

Look in Media and you can see easily – the websites new format won’t let me link directly!