Advice on hospice social worker role

Thank Progresso.

Well, as to the social worker's role . . .yesterday she went to the patient's home with the manager (who also takes call and sees patients) and helped her bath the patient and I think this conversation came up then and that she is a team member and can help the RN's.

Yes, but . .. . the day she was with me, she was there in a suit as the social worker.

steph

Well, she wasn't in scrubs yesterday either. Our social worker does not wear scrubs ever. She does the suit/clipboard but no heels.

steph

Well . . . . . I met with her and our boss.

I started with I just wanted to clear the air and get rid of the "gorilla in the room". Funny thing was there was a huge life-sized stuffed bear there for our Teddy Bear Clinic along with the health fair tomorrow and she thought I didn't realize the bear was a bear.

We sat down to have lunch together in the office and I simply said that my only concern was to ask the patient if he was ok with the social worker staying while I did my assessment as I would have to expose his entire body by removing the blanket. And the patient was fine with it. It was that simple.

She started to talk and I asked her to let me finish. I told her that my role as an RN was to be the patient advocate and assure the patient's privacy rights. I mentioned some of the things you all said - standard of care, Nurse Practice Act, etc. That should have been it.

She said that she has had more training in hospice than me and the hospice philosophy reigns over my nursing regs - and that is we are all team members and are allowed to be involved with patient care if needed. She said I didn't know enough about hospice to make a correct decision.

I said that I'm an RN first and foremost and I'm bound by the Nurse Practice Act. She disagreed - hospice comes first. (I can see that she really doesn't get the legal aspects of nursing). And today she said I asked the patient 4 times if it was alright and that was wrong to do . . .well, that is simply not true. He kept saying over and over that it was alright - but I only asked once.

I mentioned that she has on occasion crossed the line and told me how to do my RN job - she said that she should have the right to say things about a nurse's role as long as it wasn't a med question.

It escalated to her attempting to make a big deal over a very simple issue.

Finally, we decided to leave it alone. I can't convince her and she can't convince me.

steph