W
hen
your
first
case
misses its scheduled
start time, you can be
sure that the rest of
the day will be nothing
but delays. Why was
our same-day surgery
unit seeing this situa-
tion over and over
again? We didn't have
to do much investigating to see that our chaotic pre-admission charting
process was to blame. Missing test information and incomplete pre-
procedure orders resulted in delays, downtime and last-minute
reworks that frequently postponed, rescheduled or canceled cases.
We'd started by job-shadowing the same-day surgery nurse, who
complained that when she received patients' charts on the day of the
procedure, she occasionally had to scramble for missing information.
Hours before surgery and charts were still missing lab tests or H&Ps,
1 0 8 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E • M A Y 2 0 1 6
Fixing Our Broken
Pre-Admission Process
We met our goal of
100% chart readiness
by 6 p.m. on the night
before surgery.
Karen Burns, RN, MSM, &
Edward Conklin, CRCST, CHL
Salisbury, Md.
• CHECKING THE CHARTS Do incomplete charts have your pre-admission nurses
perpetually playing catch-up?
Pamela
Bevelhymer,
RN,
BSN