Orientation to the "Charge Role"

As health care providers we are faced with multiple challenges and need to multitask throughout our day. Knowing this, we often look for shortcuts and often do not take the time needed when communicating to one another. Unfortunately, communication becomes most critical in maintaining a safe environment and in helping staff manage their workload.
                Our Department (The Department of Women & Children) consists of 5 separate units (L&D, Mother/Baby, NICU, GYN Surgery, and Pediatrics) that have interdependent staff with a high incidence of floating from one unit to another within an 8 hour shift. We faced several challenges such as maintaining communication among all 5 areas, being able to assist each unit in managing it’s workload as well as meeting all of our staffing/patient needs.
                We examined many options and chose to use a “Team Training” model as the basis of educating all RN staff to the “Charge Role”. With every RN educated to this charge role and equipped with team training concepts, such as situational awareness, SBAR, conflict resolution and the chain of command, establishing “Huddles” and giving and receiving feedback, ultimately all nurses will be able to better manage their workload and the patient will be the recipient of better/safer patient care.
                Our objectives include:
1.      Understand the importance of Situational Awareness and its impact on patient safety.
2.      To be able to implement the concepts of SBAR when giving report.
3.      Understand the workflow of each unit and to Manage the Workload using our current NASH staffing grid.
4.      To be able to handle Conflict Resolution and initiate the Chain of Command.
5.      To understand how Giving and Receiving Feedback impacts conflict resolution and how it affects the culture of the department.
               We wanted to track and trend our Customer Satisfaction Scores and our safety variance occurrences to see if there was a direct correlation with improved communication and these scores. We found a 33% decrease in the number of safety variances and a 25% increase in our customer satisfaction scores.