DPH

After 12 wonderful days of vacation I came to work on Tuesday morning to see that long awaited and may I add,dreaded white sign which says "The dept.of heath is at this time conducting its survey".The sign read they will be in our building until the 22 of July.
Now with quick calculations I discovered this day was to be the dreaded nursing day.So some one was to do this small but stress filled portion of the med pass with the state personnel at hand.
As I rode the elevator to my floor I quickly went over in my mind all the rules of the med pass so as to be ready if I ended up being the lucky girl.
Once on the floor I labeled,dated and wrote all the information needed on each pitcher and bottle.Then went over in my mind all the rights of distribution of drugs,right time,right drug,right patient,right dose and so on.
How to pour and measure,how to introduce,how to explain,what the interactions are,what is given in what order and on and on and on.
So here I felt pretty sure of my mission and to my surprise the surveyor walked right pass me and on to the other nurse.Oh well I needed the preparation and stress anyways.
These 5 days can be pretty nerve wracking especially for the supervisors,DON and administrator.Failing one of these surveys can mean their jobs.
I have come to the conclusion it is what it is and there are more important things to focus on besides people scrutinizing my movements.
My floor tends to be a bit on the laid back side.We enjoy each other and have for the past two days even had fun conversations with the DPH employees. One of the surveyors talked to me today about his years has a cna then lpn in the nursing home where he first started at the age 18.
You know people are people and it must very hard to walk into a building as a surveyor and be thought of as the enemy.True they are looking for faults but its their jobs and if they don't dig hard and find mistakes how can they justify being in the position their in?
Well tomorrow is their last day and hopefully we will get through the day and get back on track for the rest of the year.That is until we walk in next summer and see that white sign in the doorway again.