I've been really busy of late. Several weeks ago, I posted about how our hospital had started to institute layoffs, which has been a bit of an eye opener considering a few months before that, we were all talking about the nursing shortage. So even though I am pretty far up the food chain now, I started to apply my philosphy of "making myself indispensable." Which basically means I have totally over-extended myself.
- I recently found out that our scheduling program (called AtStaff) already has the capability for employees to enter their own schedule requests. For years, we have been told that this was something that would be available "later" but come to find out we've had it for years. Which means I could be just a few weeks away from being able to do the schedule totally on the computer, with employees entering their requests online and balancing themselves (somewhat) online. I'll still have to make the always-unpopular decisions of who to move from the overstaffed shifts to the understaffed ones, but it can all apparently happen on our intranet without the reams of paper I presently use to produce a schedule.
- However, because no one in the hospital knows how to implement this aspect of the program, I am having to learn it on my own with some webinars from our vendor. It has been a lot of time, and I'm at the hospital late or on my days off a lot more than I like.
- After I figure out how to do the program, I have to figure out how to orient my fellow charge nurses and then our 80+ employees on the process.
- I'm still working on the implementation of the Jean Watson Caring Theory of Nursing, but I am at a total standstill. Most of this is because our initial meeting with Jean Watson simply didn't impress very much of us, especially those that are as firmly rooted in the Scientific Method as I am. I've read her material and so I saw this conflict on the horizon, but now our Clinical Directors, Vice Presidents and CEO's are wondering how to get the Jean Watson model up and running when we are also supposedly into Evidenced Based Practice. I'm sure there's a way for both to co-exist, and no one would deny that many of our patients can benefit, but I have not come up with a way to either model the behavior or teach it to others, much less design a way to document that we use the theory.
- The stock market has been in a rally for the past couple of months, which basically gives me another part-time and sometimes full-time job. I run stock screens after each day's close, which I have to spend one or two hours doing research. So when I'm working, I have to get up early to do some printing and research, then when I get back at 7am I finish that, settle on the 3-5 stocks I'll stalk at the opening bell, and then I'm watching the screen on and off until the close. If I'm working, I have to set Stops and hit the sack by 10a or I'm doomed. It's been busy but at least it's also been profitable.
- LadyKitty, our 13-year old tabby, is still getting 150-200cc subcutaneous fluids pretty much every day. That's been going on now for the past 16 months. She has her good days, and her bad days. On her bad days, I put her in the closet in my room so the other cats can't bother her, and sometimes that means I am up two or three hours after I go to sleep to let her out.
Luckily, roomie has pretty much taken over running the apartment, taking care of all the cleaning and cooking.
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