If I had the Power

If I was the head of the hospital, or even head of the nursing department.

1. Double nurses salaries straight away. By doing this we would save money. We would have no problem finding nurses to work as a fulltime employee, and we'd save millions each year in nurse agency fees.

2. Have doctors' about to do surgery personally sign the part of the body about to be operated on. As far as I'm aware, when the doctor who did the surgery signed the body part, they operated on the correct limb every time.

3. In general med/surg wards limit the number of nurse/patients to one RN per six patients.

4. Provide free meals to management, but they only get the same meals as the patients. I'm pretty sure this would improve some of the food I've seen in some places.

5. Support charge nurses when they make requests for extra staff.

6. Don't force in-house job positions to be advertised outside to the wider community when we already know who we want to employ and have quietly told the person they've got the job. This would save me and dozens of other nurses time and effort.

7. Use less out-sourcing, eg Cleaners and Kitchen services. In two hospitals where I was present when this happened, the quality of food and cleaning services dropped. This may not be accurate with other places, but it should be looked into.

8. Employ doctors who speak the local language. I've worked with so many doctors whose use of the English language was atrocious and dangerous.

These are just some of the things I'd do. I didn't actually have to think about this, it just came off the top of my head. Imagine what I could come up with if I ever did think about it a bit.