Just wondering....

[Inquisitive one]

Any 3-11 Rehab/LTC supervisors care to share? What are your responsibilities, approx. wage, paid salary or hourly, weekend commitment required, receive shift differential, size of facility, required to work a floor and supervise, what's the most challenging aspect of the job etc.. (anything you'd like to share) DON's, what are your expectations of your supervisors?

[fultzymom]

I do not work 3-11 but have been the supervisor in a LTC facility et I had to work the floor also. The RN's at my facility work on Rehab et so I only had 12 patients to myself. The other nurses on the other floors have 25 each. My floor only holds 26 total. Two others hold 50 et there was 2 nurses each floor et the other is a 25 bed secured unit with one nurse. To me the most challenging thing is being responsible for my own patients but also ultimately responsible for the entire facility. Which means when there is problems they come to me. And if there are IV's downstairs without an IV certified nurse, I have to balence my patients et any other IV's. And if a paitent dies or goes down hill, then I have to take care of my patients et help the LPN's with their patients. It is a lot to do if you have 150 facility like mine and you are the RN but I thrive on that feeling that I am not going to get everything done. I thrive under pressure like that (I know I am one of the oddballs!!).

[Daytonite, BSN, RN]

I stopped working in LTC 5 years ago, but this is what I did as a supervisor in LTC. First duty was to make sure staffing was OK and that everyone who was supposed to be on duty was there. If not, then I was rearranging the staff so there was adequate coverage on all the units (this means floating people if necessary) and on the phone finding replacements. On the 3-11 shift we were either getting last minute admissions from the hospitals or busy finishing up admissions from the day shift. There is a lot of paperwork and doctors orders that has to be followed up on. Because the regular staff is usually busy with regular duties a lot of that fell to me. By dinnertime I, along with everyone else in the facility helped with feeding. I generally helped specific charge nurses who I knew had heavy med passes or treatment throughout the shift. If there was some sort of patient incident such as a fall or a patient going bad, I was there and helping out. I was also often given things to do by the DON such as giving employee evaluations or handling disciplinary problems. I handled family and patient complaints and any call offs. If it looked like the night shift was going to be short staffed because of too many call-offs I was on the phone again trying to find staff for the night shift. I often made rounds of the patients in between doing all that. I was told many years ago when I was trained as a hospital supervisor to never let the regular staff think or believe that you have a regular routine. It makes the devious employees likely to try to break the rules and do things they shouldn't be doing. I also tried to keep an eye out for broken equipment, burned out lights, etc and make a note to report them to maintenance. One of the big jobs of the entire supervision staff was to work on the new medication and treatment sheets for the new month and make sure they were reconciled and ready for use by the first of the month. There were times when we were short staffed enough that I did have to take an assignment of patients. It happens. My pet peeve was disorganized cabinets and med cart drawers, med carts with dried syrup stuck in the crevices and smelly undefrosted refrigerators. In quiet times (ha! ha!) I tackled these little projects.