Home Health Job???

[betweenus64, LPN]

My name is Rose and I am a 3 year LPN with experience from nursing home, dementia care, primary care and pain management. Recently the office I worked closed leaving me unemployed. I am looking for work but can be a little picky right now. I have never done home health care and am very unsettled with this. I will be working in one or two homes on 8-12 hour shifts each. No benefits are available. Pay is excellent, but I need benefits and I am unsure about going into a home and staying the entire 8 - 12 hours. What will I be doing? I'm so unsure right now.....anyone worked for "At Home Health Care" or "Elk Valley" before in TN?? Please let me know what to expect....

Rose

[caliotter3]

You can find many posts/threads on a typical shift. In a nutshell, you enter the home, take report from the parent or offgoing nurse, do your nursing assessment, then proceed to provide care per the Plan of Care, 485. You should have attended an orientation session at the home prior to the start of your first shift. You need to ask for them to provide you with a copy of the 485 for your review prior to starting the shift. There you will find the nuts and bolts of what you are responsible for per the MD orders. Look up any meds you may be unfamiliar with. Ask any questions of the supervisor after reading the 485. Be sure to ask questions and take notes during your orientation to the case. The supervisor or staffing coordinator may speak to you a bit about the case before you go to the home. At the home you will be oriented by one of the nurses or by a parent.

Benefits with these home health agencies tend to be very expensive, not very good, and are tied in with the number of hours you work. If, during any particular week, you do not meet the minimum number of hours to qualify for your benefits, some plans will allow you to pay into the coverage while others do not. This is a matter to discuss with your recruiter or HR person. Good luck.

[betweenus64, LPN]

I know I can do the job at hand, but I will be spending the entire day in one home. What in the world am I to be doing? Housecleaning, laundry? I am not a housekeeper and am not applying to do such work, I am a nurse and I will stick to that. I do my own housekeeping at home. I read someplace where I would do housekeeping, keeping the rooms clean, etc, in the home. So what you think?

[betweenus64, LPN]

Oh I forgot to say, I am an LPN not RN....

thanks

[JustBeachyNurse, LPN]

Housekeeping as in whatever you use for the patient you clean up after yourself... Prepare an enteral feed wash out the containers, fill a garbage can with dirty diapers and supplies take the trash out. Laundry might be to soak something that soiled by your patient while under your care. As in the changing pad was a hot mess after a blow out diaper. I soaked it as best I could and pretreated before placing in the laundry. I've been doing private duty/ shift home health for nearly 4 years. All pediatrics. Never have I had to laundry other than soak something of my patient's that was soiled while I was working. Housekeeping limited to cleaning up after myself and my patient sometimes taking trash outside sometimes just tying the bag and putting in a new one.

My youngest and most complicated children I am busy for an 8-16 hour shift. Between scheduled feeds, meds, treatments and implementing therapies (stander , corner seat, gait trainer, adapted bike, specific splints & exercises) I sometimes wish my kiddo takes a nap so I can catch up on charting. I'm busy most of the shift. School aged kids often get a nurse to accompany at least on the bus ride to school if not 1:1 nursing at school.

[JustBeachyNurse, LPN]

Housekeeping, dishes, cooking etc is the job of a home health aide. A client that needs skilled nursing is usually beyond needing assistance with ADLs & house upkeep or may have nursing & a HHA

[caliotter3]

You are hired to provide skilled nursing care, not housekeeping duties that are more appropriate to the Home Health Aide. But that does not mean that you do not clean up after yourself or the patient while you are there. When you leave the home at the end of the shift, the patient is to be clean, dry, in a neat, tidy bed with tidy surroundings.

[KelRN215, BSN, RN]

I know I can do the job at hand, but I will be spending the entire day in one home. What in the world am I to be doing? Housecleaning, laundry? I am not a housekeeper and am not applying to do such work, I am a nurse and I will stick to that. I do my own housekeeping at home. I read someplace where I would do housekeeping, keeping the rooms clean, etc, in the home. So what you think?

No. If the child is sick enough to require a private duty nurse at home, you will be taking care of the child not doing housework. That is the job of a home health aide though most children do not qualify for HHA services since most children don't do their own cooking, cleaning, dishes, laundry, etc. You will be providing nursing care for the child- these kids are quite complicated, many with trachs, chronic vents, GTs, JTs, CVLs, on TPN, etc.

[conscientiousnurse]

FYI: This sounds like private-duty home care, so you may get more supplies in that section rather than this "home Health" section which is for intermittent visits. What to expect? You will most likely do CNA duties along with LPN duties (repositioning ct/ transferring to chair, bathing). In the PD agency I worked at before, we also did a little bit of housekeeping, like dusting and vacuuming and washing the client's own supplies, sometimes even the patient's laundry. The reasoning is that the client needs a healthy and clean environment. They did not have an aide available to be paid for, and the family already was responsible for the client usually for about 8 hrs/day (which might be the night shift). They figured we had time to maintain the client's immediate environment (and perhaps laundry) along with our other duties. Now, we never did things like windows, cleaning bathrooms, mopping floors, or cleaning kitchens.