Blogging during terminal care: communication, color schemes, and creating a community

Effective communication among healthcare professionals during hand-off reporting is essential to delivering safe and continuous patient care. Common professional interactions include reports to healthcare team members, hand-off, and transfer reports. Nurses routinely report information to other healthcare team members and also urgently contact healthcare providers to report changes in patient status.
Standardized methods of communication have been developed to ensure that information is...

Flowsheets are valuable tools in nursing documentation. They enable healthcare professionals to efficiently record and monitor various patient assessments and measurements in a consolidated format.
Here's a closer look at the examples of flowsheets commonly used by nurses:
Graphic Sheet Documentation:

Nursing documentation encompasses various formats designed to capture precise patient data, facilitate communication among healthcare team members, and ensure comprehensive and accurate patient records. Let's explore each of these formats in detail:
Nursing Assessment Form:
• A nursing assessment form is a foundational document that captures detailed patient data from physical assessments and nursing histories.
• It includes patient demographics, medical history, current medications, vital...

Focus Charting, also known as the focus charting system or "focus documentation," is a systematic documentation approach used in healthcare to organize patient information in medical records.
It typically involves three columns for recording information:

SBAR is an effective communication tool used by healthcare professionals to communicate patient information accurately. SBAR stands for Situation, Background, Assessment, and Recommendation. For a better understanding, an example is given below.
SBAR Report from a Nurse to a Health Care Provider
S: "Hello, Dr. Smith. This is Jane, RN, from the Med Surg unit. I am calling to tell you about Ms. White in Room 210, who is experiencing increased pain and redness at her incision site. Her recent...

Nursing Clinical Information System (NCIS)
A Nursing Clinical Information System (NCIS) is a specialized type of healthcare information system tailored to meet the unique needs of nursing practice. It incorporates the principles of nursing informatics to streamline information management and improve the quality of care delivery.
Critical attributes of NCIS include: