Health Unit Coordinator Tour of Duty Proposal

1. Health Unit Coordinator Tour of Duty Proposal Stephanie Re

2. Introduction A Health Unit Coordinator is around the clock program support for inpatients, nurses, doctors, etc. They admit and discharges patients administratively, assist nurses and doctors with setting up travel for patients, completing paperwork, answering numerous phone calls from staff and family members, making admission charts and breaking down discharge charts. The Health Unit Coordinator is a very important part for patient care to ensure patients are admitted correctly so nurses can provide patient care as well as discharges appropriately for insurance and other purposes.

3. Tour of Duty Problem for the HUC Currently, the tour of duties for the HUCs are first shift (7:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.) second shift (3:30 p.m. to Midnight) and third shift (11:30 p.m. to 7:30 a.m.). Management is taking away the third shift position and moving day shift to 6:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.

4. Why is this a problem? This proposes a problem because there is no support from 2:30-3:30 p.m. and from midnight to 6:00 a.m. HUCs receive calls all day long from family members and other staff and if there is no staff then the family members will not be able to talk to their loved one in the hospital because the nurses are way too busy to answer the phones. The workload for the HUC increases greatly in the afternoon and with no one being at the desk just for that hour from 2:30-3:30 can cause major problems and work will not get done. It will also decrease patient care because management is not providing support to them for the hour and the off tour hours.

5. Incident that occurred with no HUC Patients come in all the time even at 2 or 3:00 a.m. There was a patient that needed to be transferred to higher acute care such as University Medical Center. Well, the patient came in at 2:00 a.m. and the doctors realized he needed to go to University for higher care. There was no HUC to print the paper work or to set up the travel. It was an emergency so one of the nurses had to take away from her patient care to other patients and print off the paperwork, set up travel, and make sure everything administratively was done. This resulted in stress on the nurse and she went home and the other nurses had to pick up her patients. So now with 4 nurses and 25 patients, each nurse had 5 patients each and that is a lot of work on a heart floor. If there had been a HUC there, they could have taken care of all of that and patient care for that nurse would not have been interrupted. Things happen through the night all the time.

6. Other Problems Management is required to ask all staff if they would like their tour changed. In that case, if a lot of people want to change to shift and if they put too many people on the first shift tour then there will be a staffing issue on second shift where then some of the floors will not get covered at all.

7. Solution The most effective solution is to keep the original tour of duties.

8. Why is this a good option? All of the floors will be covered at all times because the shifts overlap each other within a half hour. All of the work will be complete and patients will be discharged and admitted appropriately. It will cause less conflict with nursing and doctor staff. As well as keeping other HUCs less stressed on different tours so they are not rushing to complete work or are buried in filing and other things.

9. Request On behalf of the HUCs, I would like to request a department meeting with management to explain in detail of our problem. My goal is for management to have a chance to listen to our opinions and concerns for the new tour of duty change and why it does not need to be changed.

10. Conclusion In conclusion, the most logic solution is to keep the tour of duty as it is. It will result in better patient care. Less stressed employees. Happier nursing and doctor staff. Easy flow of work day.