We toured a very nice aftercare camp for Edda on Friday. Arguably, it may be better than Edda’s old camp. The hours are longer (they have Saturday hours too!) and they have swim! So we are a “go!” for camp. It’s a tiny bit further from the house, so I need to straighten out the bussing from school, but I think I can manage that.
I was at the hospital yesterday and found out that our hospital is hemorrhaging (haha, punny.) money. They restructured cost centers (there are three cost centers, I gather and they reduced it to two and kicked out the person running one of them – there is an ice cream social to thank them for their hard work next Tuesday) and they are also looking to lay off about 30 management positions and no bedside nursing positions. I was most interested in reading the memo about how to stretch bedside nursing capacity. Basically, they are seeing that nursing will be short for the next generation (?) and so what can you do? We are still running our floor with 1/6 of the beds empty and have been for many months because we can’t staff them. So, in an ideal, fully staffed floor, I should have only 4 patients. I usually have 5. On occasion I have 6. They are trying to figure out, I think, how a nurse can cover 8 patients. So I read the memo. One idea is a virtual nurse (?). I was a little shocked about this. I’m not quite sure how this person would help me. Could they do all the paperwork and I would not have to chart? The thing about a virtual nurse is that, they are helpful when the patient is completely oriented and competent. But when the patient is slightly confused, or really confused, or hard of hearing, or english is their second language, etc – which is a lot of the the time, it’s hard to see how this would help me out. Here is a company that does it:
The other idea, which I like better, is to team the nurse up with another person 1:1 like a CNA or a LPN. I would prefer someone who can pass medications, so that would be an LPN. So two people would have 8 patients. The thing about this is that you can be teamed up with a person that completely annoys you or a person that is completely wonderful. As a side note, often, the first half of the shift, I’m completely annoyed – “Can I have some creamer? What’s up with Kosher meals, will they make them low-fiber? This water is room temperature, I take my medications only with ice water.” Argh, these are enough to drive me crazy, but then I settle and I’m ok with it. And then I don’t want to ask my server at a restaurant for anything.
Elka graduated from training school on Saturday. She did very well. But at home three hours later, she peed on the floor. I was disappointed. We are all terribly, terribly flawed. Ruby had this terrible leash aggression and would pull all the time whenever she saw another dog. Maxi had anxiety and wouldn’t let you snuggle with her and she had regular panic attacks. Elka is very loving – probably the most loving of all the dogs, but is the most unwilling to do what you say and still likes to pee in the house.
