Stroke It, Stroke It...STROKE!

I'm trying not to stroke out while I work on the stroke program.

When I took this on in late summer, I had no idea how bogged down with details it would become. The simple act of creating physician order sets has morphed into a time-consuming menagerie of meetings, during which there is one particular nurse who always wants her way. I understand where she's coming from, but if it's 19 to 1, she still thinks she's correct. It's her way or the highway. Some terminology isn't consistent and while that certainly needs to be fixed before we 'go live' on April 1, it's not going to break our stroke program. I get the feeling this particular nurse takes it as a sign of our collective, administrative incompetence.

This frustrates me. Obviously.

The not-so-simple act of creating a stroke treatment algorithm has grown into this huge debate about if Event A happens and Doctor B is tied up and what if we cannot reach Ambulance C, what will happen to the stroke patient? While I want to be prepared, this group seems to want to plan for EVERY POSSIBLE SITUATION, regardless of the fact that if it happened once since the Dark Ages, we'd be lucky. For instance, I asked Radiology to please present some data here. I already learned that decisions should be made on data, not emotion or perception. They PERCEIVE this happens a lot, but in reality, it's once or twice a year. I have a call in to the chief of Radiology to confirm this.

Sigh.

In my frustration and sheer exhaustion (I attended meetings, teleconferences, and worked for about 14 hours today), I made a list of "Remaining Crap as St. Fozzie's Pursues Stroke Designation."

It's 2 pages long. I keep coming up with more CRAP. The pieces ARE coming together, but with a list rivaling the length of the Declaration of Independence, I felt the compulsion to create this list and disseminate it to everyone on my Stroke Designation Operations Team.

It's not *that* bad…except that with our rigid timelines, I end up doing a lot of the work myself. I've delegated some things, but they are returned to me with errors or mistakes that should have been caught. In my proofreading, I find these errors and end up taking the time to correct them myself.

I had a bit of managerial coaching today from a mentor at St. Gonzo's. He says that managing entry level employees is far easier than managing professionals. I’m not so sure!