Many new Unit Secretaries always want to know what it is like working the day shift. It's busier than the night shift, and you will do things that the night shift will not.
- You will check and/or enter doctor orders into the computer.
- You will be there when Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner are served to the patients. You will call and order food trays.
- Patients will go off the floor for tests, procedures, and surgeries, so there will be many patients returning to or transferring off of your unit.
- You will have admissions from the Emergency Room, direct admissions from the doctor's office (it happens, just not a lot).
- Housekeepers will ask you which patients are being discharged (or have the possibility to be discharged) so that they can strategize which rooms to clean or not clean. It makes no sense for them to clean room 3110 at 10am if they will be discharged when the admitting doctor makes their rounds in an hour. The physician will put the discharge order in, and the patient will leave by 1pm. The housekeep will just clean the room when the patient leaves.
- You will discharge patients home, or to an SNF (Skilled Nursing Facility), or to a Rehabilitation Facility, or to an acute long term facility, or to a Hospice Facility, or to another hospital, or God forbid, you will discharge them to the morgue (the funeral home).
- Supplies will be delivered on your shift, whether it's from Office Depot/Staples, or
- the hospital warehouse.
- You will have a constant flow of patients, family, friends, visitors at the nursing station asking questions.
- And of course, you will have to answer the telephones and call lights.
So, watch the video above.
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