Guess what I am doing on this lovely day?

Specialties Home Health

Published

Specializes in ICU.

Charting. I am always charting. 3 hours yesterday and another 3 today. I'm off this weekend, and like usually, I am charting!I can't wait for this to come to an end. My daughter is with my exH this weekend, I got some me time and this is what I am doing. I almost passed up an opportunity to go to the movies with my girlfriends because the amount of charting I have to do and then I said...... Skrew that!!!Yes, I'm venting. Sorry to discourage any future HH nurses out there. Hopefully they are not all like this. Waiting for that magic call to release me from the grips!!!!

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I feel ya. I just got out of home health and spent a lot of time charting on my own time. As much as they wanted us to chart in the home, it seemed impossible because it would put me behind on my day. I made a cheat sheet to fill out while I did my assessment and skill and used that to chart off of later. If I tried to work on finishing it up in the office, I would end up not being able to finish because I needed to answer the phone, fax something out, order supplies, or a co-worker would want to chit-chat. I could get more done sitting on my couch in 2 hours than I could all day in the office. I was able to stay on top of my charting because I did it on my own time and then where I worked would want to try to send me to cover someone else's visits to give them time in the office to catch up on their charting. UGH! It was a horrible cycle. I had to get out, too. Good luck!

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Specializes in ICU.

Yes, that is quite what I deal with. I do hospice and palliative care ( and they give me the most complicated cases no one wants bc Its me and someone who has been there 20 years, so guess who gets the worst?). And when I'm in the office it's phone call after phone call, issue after issue and I can't one single thing charted. I do much more from home. It is a vicious circle.I've got a 5 year old who can't stand it anymore and neither can I. And to figure I took this job for a work- life balance! What life? My life is work! And I make the least I have in my 7 year nursing career!So, what do you do now if you don't mind me asking?

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Specializes in Surgery Pre/Post.

Same thing...except I am on call this weekend and was also on Friday. I hace 6 OASIS Start of Cares to catch up on. I hate this part of the job. I NEVER have a day "off"but where I don't have to worry about anything.

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Ugh, I have charting to do as well but I'll tackle it tonight or early morning :/ I just started working HH as a case manager. Although I love the patient interaction and the $$ is good the paperwork is frustrating!!! I'm still new so I haven't gotten the routine down so it takes me a lot longer to chart than someone who has been in the field for a while! The agency I work for is still 100% paper charting and I just hope that once we go to electronic charting it'll be less repetitive charting and faster charting. I too got in to HH hoping to find the balance between work and family and it's discouraging to hear that, that's not the case :(

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Specializes in ICU.

Took a break to go kickboxing and a little shopping. We are all paper too. I'm also a case manager and was SUPPOSEd to be a hospice. Use, but they have me doing almost all palliative which I really dislike. I k we the oasis's were hell, and palliative patients go in the hospital all the time, so as soon as I am done with my SOC, I'm doing a transfer, then a ROC..... Ahhhhhhhh!Yeah, I hate it.

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Specializes in Home Health, MS, Oncology, Case Manageme.

When I was a field nurse, I was very aggravated about the amount of work/ hours I was putting in. But then a manager brought this to my attention: If you are a salary 40 hr/week nurse, you owe the company 40 hrs of work. Just like other jobs, the 8 hrs doesn't start until you get to work. In your case, it starts when you get to the first patients home or your office, and ends when you leave the last patients home. Driving back home doesn't count as part of the time. Deduct any time that you stopped to eat, go to the bank or ran errands, etc. That is not part of the 40 hrs. Also, if you document at home, the time doesn't start until you sit at that desk. Getting up to take care of the kids or start dinner doesn't count.

After my manager explained this to me, I really kept track of work time. And to my dismay, I found that I was only working 40 hrs. My problems were that I was starting too late in the morning, running a couple of quick errands in my travels, and stopping too early so that my documentation wasn't done at the end of the day. Then, I had to make up time on the weekends.

Ultimately. I started working part-time because as a field nurse, it was too hard for me to put in that nonconsecutive 8 hrs/day . Patient's didn't want to see me at 7:30 or 8 in the morning.

Just something to think about...

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Specializes in LTC, hospice, home health.

Our charting is all electronic, but it still takes forever to get it all done. We have IPads that we're supposed to use at each visit for charting, but aside from charting the vitals, forget it. I can't do the narrative in the patient's home, and my IPad doesn't have a separate keyboard, so for me, it's a "one finger" job.

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MomRN, would you mind sharing your cheat sheet? I'm just starting HH and the charting is all electronic, but I'm thinking it will still be difficult to go through all the documentation in the pts home and I'm worried about forgetting something.

Thanks!

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How many patients do you see on a daily basis?

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Specializes in Home Health.

Salaried is one thing, though. In any other 40hr/wk job you would be expected to work 40 hrs. The agency I work at and most in our area are pay per visit. An admit $50, no matter how much time is spent in the home or completing documentation. My admit visits in the home are rarely less then 1.5 hrs and the time to complete documentation can be another 1.5 to 2 hrs. So glad I am 99% retired!

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Specializes in Cardiac/Telemetry, Hospice, Home Health.

I enter my clinical data during the visit - things like vitals, appetite, heart, lungs etc. Our software is online so I often use my iphone to enter the data right into the chart. Then I dictate the narrative into my phone right after the visit or enroute to the next visit and then email it all to my work email after the last visit. Viola! When I get home all I have to do is cut and paste the narratives into the charts. I use an iphone and Siri, but any voice recognition software will work. If I do 5 routine visits in a day, my charting takes about 1 hour. Now admits are another story... but dictating the narratives really helps me. I especially use that time if I have gotten stuck in stop and go traffic.

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