10 reasons I hate getting admissions at shift change

While there is plenty to love about nursing (and we try to celebrate that as much as possible), there are also plenty of things that make it a really tough profession. And it’s important to air those frustrations, talk them out and hopefully relieve some of the anxieties around them.

For Brittney from The Nerdy Nurse, one of the hardest parts of the gig is receiving admissions at shift change. She admits herself that “the reasons for this could fill pages upon pages,” but does her best to be concise in a blog post outlying the 10 reasons why it’s so tough. Here are five:

1. Responsibility for the patient is unclear.
2. Paging physicians to notify of arrival to floor can become a fiasco, especially when you are busy trying to complete admission assessments and get the chart ready for them.
3. The patient may be in pain, nauseated, annoyed, tired, and just plain frustrated, and is tired of answering the questions they have already been asked at least twice before.
4. It does not matter how much you have or haven’t done of the patient’s admission, the nurse receiving the new admission is always annoyed with you. I have actually stayed over an hour after my shift trying my best to get a patient admitted only to have the receiving nurse make a smart-assed comment about one medication that needed clarification!
5. An order for an NG tube at shift change is never a good thing.

To read the last five reasons why Brittney hates getting admissions at shift change, head on over to The Nerdy Nurse.

How do you feel about admissions at shift change? How about admissions or shift change in general? Tell us in the comments below!