Down time

[Grasshopper11]

I would like to know what Nurse Managers are thinking of doing to give Home Health RN's more downtime in the evening. Most of the RN's finish their 8 hour shift and then go home to document for 3 to 4 hours especially if they have starts of care.

Any ideas?

[jrt4]

I am not a home health nurse but are they issued Ipads or laptops that they could document in between visits?

[Owlgal]

You should only be seeing 5-6 patients a day, less if they are a start of care. The documentation time is built into your productivity (just as it is with inpatient hospital nursing). New nurses take longer, as they aren't as skilled/fast as experienced nurses. Document in the home whenever possible. Makes things so much easier. The problem with the flexibility in home health, is that a lot of nurses don't start their work day until late. If you are only seeing patients from 9-3:30 p.m., then you'll have to chart after your visits, until 5:30 or so. Most home health nurses don't work a dedicated 8-4:30 schedule. They don't schedule their first patient at 8, chart on that patient, proceed to the next and so forth, charting while in the home or after the visit. They rush through their visits in 4-5 hours and then complain that they still have 3 hours of charting to do. Yeah. That's because the visits only took 5 hours. When I did field work, I wasn't the best with time management during the day and so I did spend a lot of time at night, charting.