How to Complete the Admission and Discharge of a Patient as a Unit Secretary (Video)

As a unit secretary, you will be responsible for completing the admission and discharge of patients. 

The admission process begins when the patient arrives at the hospital and is registered as an inpatient. Once complete, they will be assigned a bed in your unit. They can be sent to your unit from the Emergency Room, transferred from another unit, admitted from an outpatient procedure, or directly admitted from a doctor's office. 

The discharge process begins when the doctor writes the discharge orders. There are many places a patient can be discharged to:

• Home
• Hospice
• Home with Hospice
• Rehabilitation
• Skilled Nursing Facility/Long-Term Care Facility
• Morgue 
• Funeral

By following these steps, you can ensure that the admission and discharge of patients are completed smoothly and efficiently.

What Is It Like Working On The Maternity Unit as a Unit Secretary? (Video)

A viewer asked me to expound more on my time working in the Maternity unit.

Some things to keep in mind when working on that unit:

• You will admit two patients – the mother and the baby
• The baby’s name in the system will be by their gender and last name (ex. Baby Girl Hernandez or Baby Boy Smith)
• You will place a name alerts on the chart and in the system for babies with the same last name (it doesn’t matter what their gender is, if the last name is the same place that sticker on the chart)
• The babies will have a band on them that is connected to the alarm system, so that if a baby is near is any door it will sound. This is to protect the baby from being kidnapped. Of course it is turned off if the baby is scheduled to leave the floor for a procedure or when being discharged
• You will discharge both mother and baby upon them leaving (unless the baby is not being discharge and instead is being transferred to NICU)
• You will be buzzing in a lot of families, friends, and more onto the unit who want to see the mother and the new baby
• You will interact with outside authorities because you will have some babies born addicted to drugs or HIV positive or other reasons.
• You will see women who had a baby four hours ago and now they are outside smoking a cigarette
• And more…..

 

Side note: I never worked on the Mother /Baby unit full-time, I only floated there a few times. 

Maintaining the Log/ADT Book as a Health Unit Coordinator (Video)

Keeping and maintaining the ADT (Admission/Discharge/Transfer) book is one of the responsibilities of a Health Unit Coordinator. Properly documenting when a patient arrives or leaves the unit is very important in the patient experience. 

It's also good as a backup for the times when the computers go down or if there is an incident and you need to evacuate the building.