Southwestern State Hospital Work Values

Daily Duties at Southwestern State Hospital:

Supervise 6 health service technician, 2 licensede practical nurses, and 1 registered nurse. Provide client safety on the unit. Conduct daily rounds on the unit to look for anything such as strings, belts, nails, and damaged furniture that could be used to hurt a client or a client hurt someone else. Attend daily shift report so that I will know what is going on with each client and if anything pertinent happened during the night shift and if they got any new admissions on the night shift. Address clients needs from clothing, making telephone calls to their families, making sure they get outside break time. Address clients complaints, by helping them call the patient advocate. Some types of complaints may include not getting along with a staff member, feeling like they were negelected, sexual assualt on them, and feeling like the staff is not helping them make as many phone calls that they want to make. I would attempt to find out what the complaint is and see if it is one that can be solved by the charge nurse. If it is a sexual assualt and the client can name the staff member or other client then those people are immediately removed for that area and the staff member can no longer have client contact until after an investigation is completed. I would have to fill out incident report and notify patient advocate, nurse manager, and execuative nurse within the hour of the complaint. Give medications to clients as needed. Talk to every client on the unit and write a note in their chart based on their treatment plan that was created during their treatment team meeting. The treatment team consist of psychiatrist, registered nurse, and social worker. Do all admission paperwork on any new admissions that come to the unit. Complete the discharge paperwork, make sure the client has transportation from family or friend, if not then arrange for our staff to transport them home. Make the follow-up appointment at the local behaviorl health center within 5 days of being discharged. Make sure the client has a 5 day supply of the medications and that they know when and how to take their medications before leaving the unit. Respond to any medical emergencies such as client having a seizures, client found unresponsive. Respond to any psychiatric emergency such as client to client assualt, client elopement and client to staff member assualt. During the assualt episodes we separate the clients and/or staff member from each other. We provide a quiet place for the client to desecalate, then try to talk to the client about what happened and why it happened. We also give the client other options to control their anger so that the assualts will not happen again. As the charge nurse I would be responsible for the incident reports. If the client elopes, then the charge nurse, house supervisor, nurse managers, security, and HSTs are out on the grounds on foot looking for the client in hopes that we find them before they get off campus. If the client does get off campus then the local police are notified and can pick the client up and bring them back to us. Work as the house supervisor as needed. This includes making sure all the units (3 male, 1 female, forensic and open - coed unit) have everything that the need, or help with admissions if one unit is getting a bunch, have to count any medications that the new admission brings with them to the hospital. Would be in charge of any call outs and then making sure that the next shift is covered. Notify the doctors of any emergencies, such as high blood pressure, consitpation, vomiting, being withdrawn, manic, hearing voices that are commanding to receive new order or for the physician to come see the client. Make sure that employees attend training in staff development when they are scheduled. Teach in staff development when needed. Get the clients to attend their psychosocial rehabilation classes. These classes work on discharge planning, medications, preventing relapse, community resources, some are basic math skills, basic reading skills, and some are fun where they get to play games, go to the greenhouse. Perform mid-point and yearly evaluations on the employees that I supervised. During this time frame I was only assigned to do one yearly evaluation on a LPN. Things that were looked at on the evaluation are: does the nurse give the medications correctly, does the nurse identify the clients in two different manners, does the nurse follow all policies and procedures for medications, does the nurse work as a team player, does the nurse use her annual leave and sick time appropriately, does the nurse come to work looking professional. At the end on the yearly evaluations you pull their midpoint evaluations to see what was listed as their goals and then you evaluate whether or not they met those goals in that period of time. Then you set new goals for the employee. After completing the evaluations you allow the nurse to read over what you wrote on their evualuations and get the employee to sign the evaluation, if the employee refuses to sign that is alright. The employee has an opportunity to write anything they feel is incorrect on the evaluation and then the evaluation will go to the nurse manager so that she can be the mediator on the evaluation between the employee and the charge nurse who did the evaluation.

What they like about Southwestern State Hospital:

Working for a company with an emphasis on social values and helping society is a clear and important priority for you - a critical factor in who you choose to work for. In contrast to other factors, you place an organization's reputation for fairness and concern for the community above most other aspects of the company. As you search for a new job opportunity, it is usually possible to find out if the company is involved in the community and/or if it is addressing problems and issues in society. Pay special attention to non-profit organizations and those specifically involved in social action. Moreover, speaking with current and former employees should enlighten you to perceptions of the fairness of the company's leaders and the treatment of employees.

Tags

nursing, supervisor

Skills

Software Implementation, assessing clients in crisis, giving medications to clients as ordered, supervising other employees, disciplinary actions towards employees, interviewing potential employees

These are some of the questions we asked our climbers about their experiences with Southwestern State Hospital: