Home Health

[VampyrSlayer, CNA]

Hi everyone!

I'm a fairly new cna, but I have been working for the past few months. I have an interview tomorrow for home health and I am really looking forward to being able to direct all my attention to one client at a time (I work in ltc now). I was wondering if anyone could tell me what a day is like? I'm not used to being able to spend so much time on one person. Is there a lot of down time or are there tons of things to do. I know different people require different things, but I was hoping to get an idea... Thanks!

[mvm2]

welcome to the ranks of home health vampyrslayer! :)

Indeed my days can be totally different from one another because of the differet clients I have.

For one my hours can range very differently. I only have one client in which I have a 8 hour day with them. I have worked 7am-3pm shift or the 3pm-11pm shift. All my other shifts are either 2 3 or 4 hour shifts where sometimes I am there in the morning just getting them started on their day or at evening getting them supper and to bed. Or I am there just once or twice a week to help give them a shower and help clean their house for them. I have delt with end of life care kind of a hospice case. Right now I have one case that you could say they are more of an acute case, and I keep pretty busy.

What is nice I get to have a wide range of care and experiance. Sometimes they will put you on boring and easy cases first and as the agency gets to know you more and can see that you are a trusted and reliable care giver will put you on more complicated cases, and you can get more clients and more hours. right now I am working a good 25 hours a week with 7 clients.

Many times my agancy says if you don't have enough hours call scheduling and usually there is some client that can use an extra care giver.

Hope it works out for you and you will love home health

[VampyrSlayer, CNA]

Thanks! I was told as full time I'd have 3 12s, which while doable at an ltc, leaves me ragged from running all over the facility. Idk if they'll put me with one person for the full 12, someone who might need round the clock care, or if I'll be split up. I love my residents but never get to spend any time with them which they really crave.

[mvm2]

Sounds good...could be possible that it is one person or like me they will give you a few different clients to try and get you to the hours you want. That is what is nice about home care you get to set how many hours you want to work then for them to tell you how much your going to work. Sometimes with round the clock care it can be differant depending what the client like. Sometimes they don't want three shifts because that means more people to have to deal with. So they opt to want to have just two 12 hour shifts. But many times I see it where the night person has a 12 hour shift.sometimes 9pm-9am and then two shifts during the day 9am till 3pm and 3pm-9pm