RE: motivating staff

rachel w — Wed, 16 Jan 2019 23:31:50 GMT

Thank you so much for your help and advice will def arrange a nurses meeting.

Had a quiet word and inpatient sheets are a lot better tonight when i came in, i think the help of a more experienced RVN with her helped a lot, less patients in tonight so will see what a quieter load brings tomorrow!

RE: motivating staff

Alison Clare Hickman — Wed, 16 Jan 2019 06:41:36 GMT

Great advice Apache

RE: motivating staff

apache — Wed, 16 Jan 2019 00:59:53 GMT

These things can be tricky. Personally I find initially dealing with things as a systems failure rather than dealing with an individual is a good place to start. Follow that up if not working. In this case I'd do something like:

Next staff/nurses meeting bring up that not all in patient checks seem to be happening and this has been noticed on an audit of kennel sheets. Remind the team that they need doing every 2 hours (min) and every check to be recorded and initialed. Explain further auditing of random sheets will be carried out.

The next time this person is on inpatients just have a quiet word reminding her that sheets are being audited and is she happy with what she needs to do (ideally with no one else in earshot).

Follow this up with an audit of a selection of kennel sheets (or however you record these checks) including this nurse but also some or all of the others. Don't single this person out.

If it continues to be a problem then a sit down talk in the office is needed to find out what the issue is. If that doesn't work then we move onto verbal/written warnings etc.

In my experience these things are not individuals deliberately not doing their job, either they don't realise what is expected of them or they are called away/overworked and can't do everything. Are there staffing issues? Has she had a bad experience and is frightened of doing the checks on big dogs? Has she hurt her back and is struggling, etc etc? Are the checks been done just not recorded?