Missing my first hospital

I miss my old hospital terribly. I miss the comeraderie with my co-workers there and I miss the Neonataologists and NNPs there.

I also miss paper charting, but my old NICU was doing away with that anyway. Online charting is neater, more professional, and allows for more variation and flexibility, but I liked being able to glance at my flowsheet and know immediately if I forgot to fill something in or if I'd gotten behind.

Let me tell you what I like about the my new hospital as a whole, though. Ten years ago, the hospital was on the verge of getting shut down. Patient satisfaction was in the bottom 5% in the nation, funds were non-existant, and no one wanted to refer patients here because patient outcomes were so poor.

Due to a major re-structuring, it's hard to identify the hospital now with its condition a decade ago:
1.) We are a Magnet hospital, which I have mentioned before. This means that both the nursing staff and hospital have exceeded more than 150 professional standards of excellence. Magnet hospitals exemplify the best patient care and outcomes.
2.) We currently rank in the top 10 percent of more than 200 teaching hospitals in the country using the Press-Ganey survey.
3.) The hospital is ranked 56th among the nation's top 100 Best Places to Work in Healthcare.
4.) We are number 2 amoung the nation's most prestigious academic medical centers in quality and safets, according to UHC's 2009 Quality and Accountability Study. This recognizes high-quality, safe, effective, efficient, and equitable care.

I finally finished my 7-day hospital orientation and this is my 3rd night on the actual unit. Night 3 of 5 in a row. That oughta' get me back into the night shift state of mind pretty quickly! In fact, it has already, in case you can't tell by this disorganized post :o)