Communicating priority
Moving into the attending role at the same facility where I am doing residency. I’m having some getting the nurses on the same page with me in the trauma bay. They seem to be getting tunnel vision on specific tasks and no matter what I say they keep going back to the task they want to do. For example, I would prefer we have two lines on anyone in the bay, but if the one nurse in the room is having a hard time getting the line, we may not have time to wait for them to poke multiple times. Or they’re insistent on drawing labs off the fresh line before pushing the D50 on the person with a blood sugar of 10. Or they want to do the EKG before the chest X-ray on a dyspnea.
I know we need more hands but it’s just isn’t going to happen. We are just going to have to prioritize tasks. As soon as I can leave the airway, I always come help with tasks and will place lines and collect labs. The problem is I am having to redirect people 2-3 times to get things done and our resuscitations are taking way longer than they should. I always come back to a pod full of people who should have been seen an hour ago.
Any ideas on how to get them out of the “do this task now” loop and get the most pressing thing done next? I’ve tried saying “we are doing x, then y, then z” and “we need to prioritize x over y” and finally just snapped at someone the other day and told them “idgaf about the labs, push the meds so I can get this tube in”. That worked, but I don’t want to be that person. Kind of expecting these to be far worse when I don’t have an attending that can leave the room and lay eyes on the pod in a few months here.