How to Get Excellent Hospital Care

Having a loved one in hospital care can be stressful enough without having to worry about the quality of care provided. Now days hospitals are understaffed, which can lead to inadequate care or missed symptoms during a hospital stay. Below are some important steps to ensure you or your loved one gets the care needed during a hospital stay, whether it's in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) or patient observation room.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Notepad
• Family & Friends
• Shift Schedule

1. 

   Find or purchase a spiral bound or legal notepad for recording notes, doctors and nurses names, and procedures performed. This is critical as sometimes nurses will not record tasks when things actually happen, as they are not in the room full time. They might record time of cleanup for example, instead of time of something happening.

2. Determine a shift schedule to watch over the patient 24 hours a day. Recruit family members or friends and make necessary arrangements. This is very critical, as many times patients in Intensive Care Units can not speak for themselves. They are generally either heavily sedated with pain medication, or still under the affects of anesthesia from an operation. By having family and friends always with the patient, issues such as medical equipment alerts, pained looks on a patients face, or the need to change bed sheets can all be brought to the nurses attention in a timely manner.

3. With your notepad from Step 1, record all nurses names and doctors names that visit the room along with the date and time. Question the doctors and nurses on what the plans are for the day, and write a task list on your notepad for the items they mentioned. During the day, check off each item they complete along with the time of day.

4. One of the most important tasks for nurses is to hand off information to the next shift during the change over. When the shift change occurs, review your task list with the new nurse to make sure they are in sync with what next steps need to happen in case items were missed during their hand off.

5. The nursing staff will quickly notice the attention to detail and dedication the patients family and friends have. In most cases, they will begin assigning more experienced nurses. Following these few simple steps will result in drastically improved care for your loved one during their hospital stay.

Resources

• Your Guide to Protecting Your Rights as a Patient, Dealing with Hospitals, Health Insurance, Medicare, and More

[penmom]

on 7/16/2009 Great tips!