Umm...And Why Didn't You Tell Me That???

(sorry for the language...but the pt gets across)
I have no idea why, but for some reason, I keep getting crappy reports from nurses who hand off the patients to me…it is very frustrating and makes for a very long night of playing catch up…trying to figure out what in the world I am supposed to be doing for my patients.
On one of these great occasions…I asked the nurse before me if the patient had received the 2 units of platelets, 2 units of packed red blood cells, and the 1 unit of plasma that had been ordered at 1300.  She told me yes.  However, when I walked into the patient’s room, the family member looked me dead in the eye. “Are you going to hang the blood that the doctor ordered????!!!!”  I stared at her and replied…”I’m pretty sure that the blood has already been hung.”  Apparently I was wrong…gee what a shock…but of course it took me 5 hours to discover this and by this time…I ended up spending the majority of the remainder of the night in this pt’s room, doing blood transfusions.
On another occasion…I got report from my co-worker and went to round on my patients.  Now of course the information that she forgot to tell me…was of course very important…she didn’t tell me that the patient’s family member was in the room, trying to be the doctor…and had decided to soak the patients arms in warm soapy water…Now of course normally this wouldn’t be a problem and I wouldn’t have cared…except this patient had second degree burns up the arms…and the bandages were still on the arms…so much for the use of the sterile field…and the next morning when I warned the SAME coworker who had neglected to tell me…she rolled her eyes and said “Oh yeah, she was doing that all day yesterday”!!!! REALLY!!!! Gee thanks for the heads up…
During my short time…as a nurse I have seen firsthand, and learned from many bad and difficult situations that communication is a very important thing…however it needs to be good communication…communication that actually communicates…gee what a novel idea!!! I know that you have had a long rough day but PLEASE I beg of you…take another 15 minutes and tell me about the patient!!!!!