The each day challenges of being a nurse team leader: “Do you have two minutes?”

Blog by Jo McVey (lecturer in Mental Health Nursing) at University of Caledonian Glasgow.

Being Nurse Team Leader locally mental health service for older people consists of three elements: it includes staff management, patient number management and repair management. The advice given is to “be prepared and organized”, but the fact is that we should be prepared to be unprepared. When I used to be a nursing student, someone told me that mental health nursing was all about “talking to patients and drinking lots of coffee” – I all the time wondered where this magical clinical area was.

Be prepared to be unprepared

The final thing on a Friday afternoon is frequently to refine my diary for the following week – it looks good with nice lunch breaks and space to attach with staff or patients. Monday morning begins with a web based meeting of the Community Seniors Team, which normally lasts longer than the scheduled half-hour. We discuss staffing levels, wait times, potential detentions or emergency work, and assign work for the week. Even before the meeting ended, I watched from the sidelines as a line of staff formed outside my office door. I even have 10 minutes until my next meeting and the coffee I made at 8:45 is cold.

“You have two minutes?”

The staff only wants “two minutes”, so I discuss quite a lot of concerns regarding staffing, patient care plans, assigning staff to planned detentions or emergency work, and a myriad of non-public issues. I’m quarter-hour late for my next meeting and it isn’t even 11am! Prioritizing and devoting time to your employees is significant and supports team readiness and resilience. Then a series of online meetings create a cloud in the course of the day. These meetings could be difficult and will highlight issues that reveal that we’re all striving to offer our patients with the high standard of care we consider they deserve. After the meeting, I even have to develop an increasing number of creative ways of working, which might put additional pressure on employees. Implementing change is difficult and made tougher by the each day changes we’ve got experienced over the previous couple of years of the pandemic. For less urgent changes, I write a friendly email inviting staff to come back and discuss further with me.

The best piece

As a nurse team leader, you might be expected to perform a small variety of more complex cases. I even have seven patients and three of them require weekly contact and risk management work. No matter how my day goes, I consider the time spent with patients to be the very best a part of the day. It’s the a part of the day that jogs my memory why I do what I do. I even have 15 years of clinical experience as a nurse and learn from patients on daily basis. I value the title of Nursing Team Leader, but at heart I’m a CPN and despite the increasingly complex presentation of the patients I support and the duality of my current role, I’m well aware of how vital this hour within the day is for people scuffling with their mental health problems. . I’m on my technique to see my first patient; the cold coffee remains to be sitting on my desk, and I’ve missed my regular lunch hour. I almost make it out of the home, but a concerned team member catches me as I’m leaving and asks, “Do you have two minutes?” Ultimately, I return to the office after patient visits with a listing of more tasks that have to be accomplished by the top of the day; I all the time try to maintain my word.

Reflections

After a fast sandwich and at last a cup of coffee, I complete more tasks and write notes. This is inevitably followed by one other series of “two-minute catch-ups” that all the time appear to last more than two minutes. I check my diary and leave unfinished tasks for the following day. I spend 40 minutes on the way in which home reflecting on what I achieved and what I didn’t, and I sit up for the times ahead with more meetings, reports, staff inquiries, patient reviews and rankings, and repair level issues, that I’ll or is probably not prepared for. It’s often difficult to feel like you have completed something when your to-do list isn’t finished, however the “two minutes” to unravel staff problems allows them to proceed working, and the time spent with patients helps them get through the day. Therefore, although I even have to be prepared to be unprepared, my role is threefold and the main focus is on people.

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