Kudos
- Nx shift Feb 5 to Feb 6 - excellent diligence during the start of the roll out
- Shania - for assisting in a huge change for the start and stop of meds
- Dx Feb 6 - for continuing diligent care with the MAR roll out. Everyone - keep bringing concerns and questions forward.
- Kas Feb 8 for cleaning staff room
- thank you for taking such good care of me, John (patient)
- Christine - for catchign a med error by doing the Med PIP
- unit 2 Sunday Nx crew (Feb 4)
- CNEs for changing bank days and coming in at night to support MAR change implementation
2023-24 Vacation Carry Over - all staff (SUN and SEIU) with 40hrs or less in their vacation bank for use this year will automatically have those hours carried over into 2024-25. No approval is required. If you are on leave or will be on a leave beginning before March 31, 2024 your benefit banks will be frozen and no need to get approval. If your 2023-24 vacation bank will exceed 40hrs and you want to carry over hours >40, you will need to complete a new form. To access this go into MyConnection and search for knowledge document KB0013917 - the form is linked in this. FYI - for future needs this is the same form that will be used for vacation payout requests.
Department number changes - after Feb 9, 2024 there will be two department numbers for our unit. This will affect which dept you use on the Staff Scheduling site. If you are part of the new dept R245 you will need to make sure you select that dept when submitting online otherwise requests will be denied. If you have had recent submissions denied it is because this dept number is not fully in place until Feb 9, so please resubmit requests after Feb 9.
- Dept R270 - all RN Nurse A (unchanged)
- Dept R245 - all LPN, UA, USW, CCA, RN Nurse B (coordinators), Nurse Practitioners
Charge Nurses - when you are looking-up staffing on department schedules online you now have to use the department drop down to select each of the two departments for who is working.
Hospital Acquired Infections - we've had several hospital acquired RSV infection cases attributed to our unit this week. One more and we would have been declared on outbreak.
Strict adherence to proper hand
hygiene – 4 moments of hand hygiene
·
****Minimize clutter throughout the unit and
nursing stations, including patient rooms- surfaces CANNOT be
disinfected if they are full of clutter
-
Keep patient room and PPE carts clear of
clutter and drawers closed.
·
Staff must perform hand hygiene prior to
entering PPE carts –
-
Access PPE carts with CLEAN HANDS ONLY.
Organisms can survive on cloth and other surfaces, accessing the PPE cart
with dirty hands can contaminate supplies (ie bags of clean PPE gowns). It
was noted during previous hand hygiene audits that some staff are not
performing hand hygiene prior to donning PPE and are therefore, potentially
contaminating the PPE supplies.
-
Clean supplies should NOT be on
the floor (ie gowns hanging out of PPE carts on the floor, BP supplies on the
floor, etc)
·
Nursing work/procedure black tables in patient
rooms must cleared and disinfected q shift. (If
using blue pads they must be changed q shift)
·
PIPD unit staff to frequently
disinfect high touch surfaces bed rails/work spaces/counters at the nursing
desk, keyboards, med room, etc.
·
Ensure patients are immediately placed
on additional precautions if exhibiting symptoms
·
Ensure staff ONLY have access to patient
Kanban supply cupboards (remind staff that hand hygiene must be done prior
to accessing Kanban cupboards).
We have also had an MRSA case attributed to our unit. This patient was not
swabbed for MRSA on admission despite meeting criteria. All patients must be screened for AROs on admission and swabbed accordingly.
We just want to keep reiterate maintaining diligence and compliance with all IPC practices. This includes not allowing patients on any sort of precautions in the playroom (now reopened) and the teen lounge. A patient positive with MRSA does exclude them from accessing these spaces.
New Equipment - PT/OT have purchased new floor play mats for every room. They should be all out now, are light blue, and are to be kept in the tall, narrow cupboard when not in use or upon discharge. Housekeeping should be cleaning these as part of their routine.
Rec Therapy/Child Life Updates -
The Young Playroom
The playroom is now open for patients and families.
Infection control is currently working on the development of a work standard
for cleaning the playroom, immune compromised play room, the teen room, and the
outdoor space. All staff will have responsibilities to keep the spaces clean
according to infection control toy cleaning guidelines. Housekeeping does not
clean toys. If a cupboard is unlocked, please re-lock when leaving the space.
Reminder patients on precautions (any level) cannot go to
the playrooms/teen room.
Immunocompromised Playroom
We are still working on making the immunocompromised
playroom suitable for patients. It will remain closed until the work is
completed. The Wii systems will “live” in the immune playroom.
The Give-Away Cupboard
The give-away cupboard has always been stocked by generous
donations from the community. The amount of items stocked depends on the ebbs
and flows on physical toy donations to JPCH. There is no budget to keep the
supply up. However, the child life team is submitting a Sunshine Grant to the
JPCH foundation in order to keep the cupboard stocked as it is used so often.
Submissions are due end of February.
Until further notice, the giveaway items will be kept on the
cart in the immunocompromised play-room.
Volunteers
Now the play room is open, volunteer services will be
filling a new Playroom Volunteer role. We hope to have volunteers supervise and
help with keeping the playroom clean Monday-Sunday, 10:00AM-12:00PM. This line
will take some time to fill. The hope is to have facilitated programming
available to patients and families each morning in the playroom.
We are hanging photos of specific cars/wagons to identify
where to park consistently. This will help keep the playroom from becoming a
drop off/holding area, and over-cluttered.
CNE Updates
- You can keep underlining medication, dose and time due in
red pen on the MARs when doing your nightly MARs.
- Continuous infusions: you can keep doing
“(0000-0747)”, etc to show the medication or IVF was infusing. Please see the examples in the Continuous
Infusions section in care plan binder.
This includes the mcg/kg/hr as well as how the medication was
mixed. If you have questions, please
ask.
- You can keep underlining medication, dose and
time due in red pen on the MARs when doing your nightly MARs.
- Our direction from Nursing Practice is:
Master signature sheets are only meant for those initial in the chart (nursing)
- aka MARs. Physicians and other team members sign their names and designations
when making orders or notes. You only need to sign a patient’s signature sheet
once per admission
- Hot shots have been replaced with a product called Infant
Porta Warm Mattress. These are located
in each clean supply room in a small brown box.
Please have a look for them if you need them in the future for warming a
patient. There is also a Q-card for them "Instant Warming Packs for
Patients" This is under W for warming in the Q-card box.
- There will be a virtual APHON course March 21-22. The CNE's will reach out to you to
register. If this is something you would
like to take part of, please reach out to us.
