Advice for new ADON

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Specializes in wound care, hyperbaric nursing.

Hello all,

I have been out of a job for a while and even though I had applied at a lot of facilities the only place I was interviewed and offered a job was a local nursing home. I had to take the position because I needed the job. The position is an ADON. I do not have any LTC experience. The DON and administrator are both RNs as well and they both have many years LTC experience. I am very nervous about starting this position due to my lack of LTC experience. The DON and administrator both assure me that everything will be fine and they would rather train me that hire someone with a lot of experience who is set in their ways. I would appreciate any advice anyone could give me. I don't even know what my duties are. I am also concerned about what my legal liability will be as I have seen some care that is not up to my standards. The other thing is I was in a meeting and overheard someone saying that there was always an RN on call. Is the ADON typically oncall? I don't feel I know enough to be oncall. Also the reason I left my previous job was I was required to provide oncall and it got WAY out of controll. I guess I am just nervous and scared and would appreciate any advice!

Thanks!

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Specializes in LTC, MDS, Education.

Better get a job description soon. And find out about being on call. Keep us posted and I hope it works out for you! :nurse:

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Specializes in Gerontology, Med surg, Home Health.

No experience in LTC and you're the ADON?? Good luck with that. When I was the ADON I was on call. We all took turns. If there was a call out it was up to us to fill the slot or work the floor ourselves. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. The ADON has to stand in for the DON when she's out of the building. I hope your DON is the kind of person who does teaching and training on the job.

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Specializes in Geri, psych, TCU, neuro--AKA LTC.

On-call at our SNF is basically being available for contact by phone (on-call pay should cover the cost of a cell phone each month). I've only had to go in and work the floor one time in 3-1/2 years- 4th of July, everyone out of town/ requested off for the weekend. All of our RNs have remote access to our EMR, so we can look things up in the medical record while talking to other staff on the phone.

** Lighter note-- our LPNs know that if they have to call me in the middle of the night, they have to reorient me first. "It's saturday night, No you're not late for work, ____ had a med change on Thursday, are you awake yet?"

I hope they have a bunch of good inservices lined up for you, you'll need a lot of training as far as regs, documentation, assessments, Medicare, etc.

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