Geriatric Nail Care

[tinkle]

I am thinking of starting nail care in our community as I think it is really needed. I know our podiatrist charges $50.00 and does a terrible job. Then will tell the nurses that they could do this and he doesn't know why he comes in. Some of these nails are very thick and the nurses really cannot do them.

Do any of you have any suggestions? Tinkle

[suebird3]

At my facility, ONLY the Podiatrist does toenails, especially if the patient is a diabetic. I don't want the legal ramifications if anything goes wrong; my license is too valuable. I would tell the Doc that, too.

Suebird

[CaseManager1947]

Some of the things you need to think about before launching into this as a career path are the following: 1) are you going to try to bill insurance??

or 2) expect payment directly?? 3.) I know that some clinics in our community do feet care, but are connected with a larger entity, such as hospital or health clinic 4) gotta be really careful lest you be perceived as practicing medicine w/o a license. In my state at least, you cannot bill for services to insurances and medicare/medicaid unless you are a midlevel practitioner (ARNP or PA-C) or physician. This requires a UPIN # and being on insurance panels. Do some investigating -check with your BON etc. before going forward. Just some words to think about.

Morghan, MSN, ARNP

[tinkle]

Suebird, our nurses donot do the nail care with the residents. But I do think our community could use someone to do them. Our podiatrist is not very helpful to us. I was not advocating for them to do them just wondering is anyone had experience doing them outside of LTC.

[Nurse Ratched, RN]

You might want to check out the entrepreneurship forum here for nurses starting their own businesses :).

[Spring_Peeper]

I am a nursing assistant, and seeing people's untended toenails is one of my pet peeves. I hate having to put on TEDs and socks over long, pointy, sometimes broken, toenails and I'm not allowed to do anything about it. How terribly uncomfortable it must be to have long toenails and wear tight shoes. I resort to dressing some of my residents in slippers.

I would like to get the education and tools needed to do toenail care. Whoever is supposed to be doing it certainly doesn't do it often enough where I work.

[Narnia456]

Can they just go get a pedicure from a manicurist? Or if you wanted to start that as a buisiness, just get a manicurists license and do it under that?