Procrustean's Bed

One of my biggest gripes about what has happened to health care is that there is more taking care of paperwork than taking care of patients. Anyway I was between cases and going though the patients chart looking at all the stuff that has to be entered. (You know electronic records are supposed to save time!) and of course all of the record requirements are JACHO and CMS mandated. On the patient intake there is a whole section on psychiatric symptoms including where the patient is to be asked if they had any suicidal of self destructive ideation. Of course, this has to be documented. The only issue was that the patient was from the NNICU and was 4 days old. A RN had to enter all this. Even though it was N/A all through it, the nurse still had to do it instead of watching and taking care of their patients!