Bored during home care!

[Me93RN]

Hey! This is my first post here! So I got my rn lisence in july 2015 and I'm doing home care now. My plan is to move on to a hospital but I just started college again for my bsn....so I'm going to wait a bit.

In the meantime, I'm getting great vent and trach experience but my problem is that although my case is a very busy one, there is still a good 4 hours that I'm hardly doing anything. I bring my laptop along and do school work but I need more ideas of how to use my time. Sometimes I'm soooooo bored!

Any suggestions?

[Norma Ward Acevedo]

Hello,

 

I see a lot of comments that say to pick up a hobby or binge watch a show while working home health. The family I work for (mainly the mother) has me treat the home like it's an ER. I do everything that her child needs (meds, reposition, suction, clean the patient and their area, order supplies, go for short walks nearby and make sure they are happy). There is a lot of downtime but she does not allow me any room to do these hobbies I see listed. Instead she tries super hard to have me watch her other kids! She wants me to clean up around the house and do odd chores that I do not feel like doing. Can I get some advice on how I can work through this? How can I get out of doing such things and doing what I want to? 

[Crystal-Wings, LVN]

Norma Ward Acevedo said:

Hello,

 

I see a lot of comments that say to pick up a hobby or binge watch a show while working home health. The family I work for (mainly the mother) has me treat the home like it's an ER. I do everything that her child needs (meds, reposition, suction, clean the patient and their area, order supplies, go for short walks nearby and make sure they are happy). There is a lot of downtime but she does not allow me any room to do these hobbies I see listed. Instead she tries super hard to have me watch her other kids! She wants me to clean up around the house and do odd chores that I do not feel like doing. Can I get some advice on how I can work through this? How can I get out of doing such things and doing what I want to? 

Find another job. Private duty nursing blows. The pay sucks, the benefits suck, there's no PTO and you're stuck in someone's house all day long with usually neurotic families breathing down your neck. I left private duty 3 years ago for a position as a nurse at a small LTC in a religious community and I've never looked back. You could never pay me to go back to private duty nursing. I've leaned more skills at this job in 3 years than I ever did during the 5 years I did private duty.