curious about late hours in home care

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  1. by Feb 6, '11
    Within the last 8 months I've gone back into home care after 15 years in the hospital. I was on call on a Sunday night and was made to stay out visiting a patient until after 11pm. I didn't get home until 1145pm. Is this normal now? My management didn't even really push to get the doctor to agree to this visit being made 12 hours later in the morning? It involved a first dose IV antibiotic and the patient was to remain on other IV antibiotics anyway. Any insight?
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  3. 4 Comments so far...

  4. Feb 6, '11 by
    If I were you I would speak about my reservations about this as a common practice. Either the atb had to be started immediately or it could have waited until the morning. Find out what this agency and/or doctor is going to be expecting of you in the future.
  5. Feb 11, '11 by
    The patient needed stat IV antibiotics? At what point would transfer be indicated?
  6. Feb 11, '11 by
    I've done this before, but my agency has a "first dost policy". The first dose needs to be done in the hospital, outpt dept, or Dr office. We do have pt's come out of the hospital and need PM doses. We try to get them before 10pm, but some Dr's insist on a specific time. It does not happen every day, but it does happen. We have a M-TH on-call nurse, so I am only on call aprox 1 Fri every other month, so it's not too bad.
  7. Feb 11, '11 by
    we have weeks that go by with no calls/visits after hours and we have weeks where every nite the call nurse is doing an admission,,,,,basically if the patient needs to be seen, we see them,,,they hardly ever refuse a referral!!!