Monday, November 12, 2007

The Joint

This post is for all my fellow nurses out there. I began my day with a phone call this morning, first thing. Of course, NO phone call you get (especially from work) at 7:30 in the morning can be good news. Turns out The Joint Commission has decided to pay us a little visit. Which, of course, means that everyone is running around in a panic state.

I just got off of the "wrap up" phone call for the day listening to all the crazy things that people are doing RIGHT IN FRONT OF TJC even though we have been going over things you HAVE to do for regulatory compliance for MONTHS!!! I wouldn't have much of a job if all of those regulations didn't exist since that is the main basis of my job - Joint Commission compliance for the outpatient centers, but still, some of the regulations are crazy ridiculous.

So for all of you out there awaiting your surveys - know that TJC is tied up in Atlanta for a 5 day survey at CHOA making my life difficult.

So, you may not be hearing from me much this week. If you are a nurse and feel my pain......send me some love..........

~ Knit Witch RN, BSN, MSN, MPH in TJC hell for a week who would rather be knitting

1 comment:

theyarnwhisperer said...

I feel your pain. Nothing like Joint Comission to strike fear in the hearts of nurses.
And for those non-nursey types who read your blog, its not that nurses are a bunch of slackers who give substandard care. There is a committee that goes around and gives accredidation to hospitals and every year they come up with something new to focus on and I swear each year it gets more outlandish. One of their recent big things has been about pain levels. As nurses, we ask our patients if they are in any pain and we have to document this. If they are in pain, we medicate them appropriately and we are to reassess their pain and document it thirty minutes after administration. Ok, here's the really stupid point. I work in an ob department. Women are in labor. Labor is supposed to hurt. We expect it to hurt, but here we are documenting pain levels of women where pain is pretty much a standard of what's going on with them.
They also focus on us having committees to assess all sorts of different stuff and we all go through a catechism of sorts on what these committees are and what all the acronyms stand for.
Its no longer about if we're giving good patient care and if we're doing it safely. Its become so much more than that.