What tasks are assign to an LVN in home health?

[Rocio8809, LPN]

Hi everyone

Im a recent LVN and barely started to work in an elementary school. I love it and love the flexibility of it but theres something i still concern about. First of all in a school setting an LVN can do so much and i dont get to practice my skills as much as in a hospital setting. Second i will only work 9 months only and i will be almost 3 months off from work. So my question is i was looking into home health and any nurses out there who are LVNs and have work into home health, what exactly does an LVN do and will i be able to practice my skills there? Also, since i work in the morning is home health flexible as well?

[caliotter3]

Home health is as flexible as you want it to be. Discuss this with your staffing coordinator. They will provide you with another case/cases to work when school is out or you will work with your student at his/her home. Generally, you are provided a copy of the Plan of Care, commonly called the Form 485, for each case. It lists all of the requirements for the case. You are responsible for rendering the care that is called for on that plan of care. When your patient has a change of condition, you assess, and then inform the physician, take and implement any new orders. Write out the new orders on a form and transmit this form to your agency. Call your clinical nursing supervisor to inform him/her of the change of condition and to ask any pertinent questions that you have about the plan of care. That is it in a nutshell. As for skills, a lot of repetitive type of care because you are taking care of stable, long-term patients. Some nurses tire of this venue and move on to other areas of nursing. Others are content. You can discuss the type of cases that you want to work with, again, with your staffing coordinator, or the nursing supervisor or Director of Patient Care Services. This nutshell is for extended care home health. The big difference in intermittent visit home health is that your visits are shorter, of episodic duration, and you generally do more than one visit in a workday.

[Penelope_Pitstop, BSN, RN]

I work for an office that only offers short-term intermittent care for adults (no vents/trachs, no chemo, either). The visits are between 40 minutes to an hour on average. We do employ LPNs and they typically do routine visits. (Wound care, assessment, teaching, etc.)

I have an LPN friend who works for a home health care agency also but she does the opposite - she works with pediatric patients who are vent-dependent. In fact, what she does is more of a "private duty" feel in that she works overnight shifts and is only with one patient. Whereas an LPN who works with me will see four or five every day and during "bankers' hours" only.