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Screening Of Blood Glucose Checks

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Over two night shifts I had very similar assignments. Both nights my assignment had multiple patients requiring blood glucose checks, and one patient that required hourly checks with lab draws ever other hour. These simple tasks do not take much time, but the culmination of them all can be time consuming, so I needed some help getting those checks done one time. However, the first night I arrived to find that we did not have a clinical assistant (CA) helping the nursing staff.
In the past when I have cared for patients with these frequent checks and lab draws, I have broken up the responsibility between me and the CA, where each of us goes in ever other hour, the CA for the glucose checks, and me, the RN, for the hours that required the lab draw as well. The idea being that that patient is getting all the care needed, but both the CA and I have time between checks to attend to the other patients in our assignment. Without a CA the first night, I became aware that with the time commitment of all these tasks, I was unsure if I would be able to give my other patients the time and care they needed to keep them safe that night, much less have the time to respond to any critical changes in patient status if they occurred. As I assessed what could be done, I reached out to my Charge nurse to see what help she could give me in obtaining lab draws and glucose checks. As I did that, I also checked in with the other nurses at my pod to see if they could be extra resources to me

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