Home health nursing pressure

caliotter3 · Feb 15, 2012

If you are having health problems that are being worsened by your scheduler trying to foist more visits on you than you can comfortably handle, suggest you seek an extended care position. If your agency can not provide you extended care cases, then find an agency that can accommodate you. Easier to get out of the arena, if you are being pressured, than it is to constantly be under a guilt trip atmosphere. Asserting yourself may backfire or take forever and a day for you to win, just move on to an area where there is less of window for them to make you miserable when you need to say no. Good luck.

AMN74 · Feb 15, 2012

I have been a home health nurse for more than 15 years, both in administration, and out in the field. I am currently a field staff member, and prefer it that way. I do not like office politics. Anyway, that's off topic.

Home Health, as you will find demands that you be very flexable. I get an assignemnt based on our computer program's interactive scheduler. I try to call my patients the night before and let them know that I'm coming. But often the day gets changed before I can even get out the door in the morning. Either a patient has a blocked foley, a IV problem, or a Vac dressing that needs replaced, and so I have to reschedule and plan accordingly. I have learned over the years to tell my patients on the phone the night before that I am coming, and my "target time will be between x-y time (usually a 1-2 hour time slot), but I may be running late and if I can call them I will try to call them when I am on my way to their house". It is a very diffiuclt thing to schedule and keep up. Sometimes I have to call my office and tell them that I have a PRN visit that I have to do and give them back a patient to restaff if I am too busy to handle it all. I don't let them give me any flack about it, I see as many patients as I can and do all that I can, but I will not allow them to run me into the ground. You can only do so much in a day, and if they are putting pressure on you to do more (if you are meeting productivity) then you have the right to say NO and they have to get over it. I know that if I am on call that night, and they are already pressuring me to see more, sometimes I will work late and do more, because it would ultimately fall on me to do it after hours anyway. It's just the nature of the game. Be flexable, be willing to work with the scheduler. I have a certain "territory" that I generally see patients in, it is the furthest distance away from the office. So sometimes when they call to add a patient to my schedule I will agree to take a patient that is further out, if they will restaff a patient closer to the office that another nurse could pick up.