You have been working at Memorial Hospital for 3 months and have begun to feel fairly confident in your new role. However, one of the older nurses working on your shift constantly belittles your nursing education. Whenever you request assistance in problem solving or in learning a new skill, she says, “Didn’t they teach you anything in nursing school?” Your charge nurse has given you a satisfactory 3-month evaluation, but you are becoming increasingly defensive regarding the comments of the other nurse. ASSIGNMENT: Explain how you plan to evaluate the accuracy of the older nurse’s comments. Might you be contributing to the problem? How will you cope with this situation? Would you involve others? What efforts can you make to improve your relationship with this coworker?

 

You are serving on an ad hoc committee to examine ways to improve the continuity of patient assignments because your unit is thinking about switching from total patient care to a primary nursing care delivery model. The committee is having a difficult time formulating policies because you currently have a great number of nurses who work part-time, 2 days on and 2 days off. In addition, your unit has a census that goes up and down unexpectedly, resulting in nurses being floated out of the unit often. The committee is committed to providing continuity of care in the new patient care delivery system. ASSIGNMENT: Develop some scheduling and staffing policies that have the probability of increasing continuity of assignment and will not result in a financial liability to the unit. How will these polices be fairly executed, and do they have the potential to cause staff to leave the unit?