ALF staffing and workload

Specialties Geriatric

Published

Specializes in adult psych, LTC/SNF, child psych.

I just had an interview for an ALF today and something just felt "off" to me. There's three floors and one nurse, for starters. Two aides. 72 residents. Some of them self administer medications. Some are confused. The Director wants me to work 3-11 weekends with 2 days of 7-3 orientation and 2 days of 3-11 orientation. How mad is this? Am I just used to SNF/LTC staffing?

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Staffing in a lot of ALFs depend on the level of need of the residents and if they are private pay or not. You could have 30 residents that are level one fully independent and staff just does their laundry and makes their meals. ALF and SNF are very different worlds.

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Specializes in LTC, assisted living, med-surg, psych.

RUN---do not walk---away from this job. As the RN you'll be solely in charge of caregivers who may not even be certified, and it will be up to you to perform all admission and quarterly assessments (at minimum). It will also be up to you to make sure your caregivers are trained and perform their jobs correctly, investigate all incident reports, initiate and revise service plans, be on-call 24/7/365, run interference between resident families and other staff, make sure self-administering residents are doing their meds correctly as prescribed by their doctors and recommend changes when they become unable to do so safely (which is often very strongly resisted by both residents and families as it costs them more).

This is the job that nearly landed me in a psych unit a couple of years ago. The pay is reasonable, but it's not worth the hassle. :no: My advice to you is to keep looking!

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Specializes in Gerontology RN-BC and FNP MSN student.

We have 2 nurses during the day(12hour shifts)...and 1 @ night. 90 residents. I absolutely love love love this job...after 26 years of working as a nurse I'm so happy!! The acuity is lower, we have pendants they wear to notify if they fall. It's private pay and very ritzy. We also have. Manager that does the care plans. I highly recommend trying it out. It's not as bad as it seems. Best wishes to you!!!

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