Any Admission nurses out there??

aimeee, BSN, RN · Sep 5, 2007

I'm not quite sure what you are asking for.....

We have a full time admissions nurse who is salaried and several part-time admissions nurses who are hourly. Our full time nurse likes a later schedule so she does late morning and late afternoon admissions, or sometimes an early evening one if the family cannot meet in the day. The others do an early morning and an early afternoon one. 2 is really all anybody can do in a day because it is such an involved process and there is so much documentation to do.

I liked doing admissions much better than case management. I liked the variety. Every single one is different. I loved meeting all the different people and the challenge of varying my approach to the specifics of the case. And it was nice to finish the day and just be able to turn it over to the team and be done. Some people hate admissions and love case management. Its really an individual preference.

We average about 60 admissions a month. There are more appointments than that because some don't admit, and then there are some that are informational visits at the hospital one day and then the admission a day or two later when they come home. Its a rare weekday when we don't have at least two appointments and we have had as many as 9 on a single day.

Rnmomajmj · Sep 6, 2007

Thanks for your reply, sometimes I'm not even sure what I am asking! Our office is small and have been having the case managers doing all the visits, evals, admissions, and prn visits. We just got corporate to agree to let us hire another nurse so I will now be moving to admission nurse and the new person will take over my case load. I really think I will like the admission nurse position. I just wanted to know if someone had any suggestions for an admission nurse, such as reference materials, organizing their days, etc...

Thanks!

aimeee, BSN, RN · Sep 6, 2007

Ah....reference materials....do you mean what is handy dandy to have with you? Your "tool kit?" If this is what you mean then I suggest a list of the physicians you work with most often, phone numbers of all the hospitals and nursing homes you work with, a list of all the pharmacies in the area and their phone numbers, the worksheets for all of the various terminal diagnosis. There isn't as much to organizing your day when you are doing admissions because the flow of the process pretty much determines that.

debblynn13 · Sep 6, 2007

We have a fairly small hospice. At this time we have 3 case managers and one admission/referral nurse.

My suggestion is that the admission/referral nurse be a flexible position. I have noticed that she might not be busy at all a the beginning of the week but then swamped at the end of the week. I think it would work well to be on call on mondays and then maybe even work 4 longer days at the end of the week. This is just an observation from our hospice.

Good luck. I think it takes a special person to be an admission nurse. I'll stick with case management.

Deb

shrinky · Sep 19, 2007

I am a Hospice admission nurse and find that I have those days with none at the beginning of the week and usually am swamped at the end. We are affiliated with the local hospital and they like to empty out at the end of the week. I enjoy meeting so many families as I also do consults, talks and educate nurses and MDs at the hospital informally. I do the discharge planning for our future patients before they leave the hospital so I can order equipment and meds they will nedd at home. I currently have a small caseload of 3 patients which will be taken by another nurse soon. I do assist with inpatient pain management and symptom management when requested and am amazed how smart our docs are becoming. It is quite intresting work, I have been a Hospice nurse for 7 years now and cannot think of any other nursing I would rather do.

hospicenewby · Sep 22, 2008

Good Morning,

I have a few questions. I am interviewing for an Adm hospice position this afternoon. I am a RN for 17 years, CCRN. I have found a new passion for hospice (palliative) care. They have told me "No nights, No weekends, no holidays". This is a new hospice location (50 mile radius). I have always been hospital based acute care.

This all sounds to good to be true. The pay seems very low (26.00/hr) salaried. There has to be more negetives. Are there any adm nurses out there that can give me some feedback and any suggestions on questions I need to ask. Do you think I can transition to a hospice adm nurse and my patients will still get the care they deserve? They said someone will train me, but how long is normal to be ready to be on your own?

Thanks so much, :nurse:

finn11707 · Oct 2, 2008

We love our admission nurses!---we used to have 4 oncall nurses who wanted up to 3 days work per week and were somewhat flexable so it worked great! They do one admission visit and 1-2 re visits. Now, we have one full time admission RN and our 2 Pm nurses also do an admission often at the beginning of their shift--The admission nurse frees up casemanagers to follow up problems in the field and casemanage. We plan a visit 2-3 days after the admission visit. The paperwork and admission process becomes a snap they say when doing one daily. We have streamlined our careplans and are on laptop, so info is transmitted within hours of admission visit. We have fought hard to keep our admission nurses and they also report they like the work, often feeling it is a nice break from the heavier work of casemanagement, working more closly with patient/families and deaths. They tried to have the admission nurses do 2 admissions in an 8 hour day however and found this was not possibly with acceptable quality.