Published Feb 19, 2012
lizfnp
2 Posts
I am curious how many providers out there are allowed administrative / charting time during the course of a clinical day. How many hours do you spend charting after the day is done? I am a FNP in family practice, and we are expected to see 3 patients/hour and chart after the day is over. I find this is taking me between 2-4 hours each night after I get home. And this is after furiously charting through my lunch break.
Basically, I work at the clinic for 9 hours and get home to chart for another 2-4. I am salaried so I do not get paid for this time. Is this unusual? Needless to say I am getting burnt out.
BlueDevil,DNP, DNP, RN
1,158 Posts
I get 8 hours a week.
What is your practice setting, BlueDevil, and how are those hours distributed? Daily/weekly? Did you negotiate this or is it standard practice where you work?
BCgradnurse, MSN, RN, NP
1,678 Posts
That is how it was in my previous job. I was technically given 2 hours a week, but those were taken up with meetings. We were told that we were expected to work 60 hours per week, but get paid for 40. That was one of the main reasons why I left.
We don't get admin time in my current practice, but I have plenty of time to chart as I see patients. Nobody takes their computer home. I am now in a specialty practice as opposed to primary care, so my focus is much narrower. I think that makes it a little easier.
NPinWCH
374 Posts
I'd love to get admin time, but I don't. I'm expected to see patients for 40 hrs/week. This aggravates me since the docs in our practice get 4 hours/week and I usually see more patients than they do. Our medical director is working on getting the NPs admin time, but for now there isn't any.
I work in a primary care family practice environment. Admin time is standard practice in our group. FT means seeing pts 32 hours a week, any 32 hours of my choice. I use Wed and Fri adternoons for admin time, seeing pts only until noon those days. Sometimes I take my computer and work from home, but I usually stay and do it in the office because there are resources there that I need to be most efficient. My coworker takes all day Monday for admin and generally works from home. Everyone does something a little different.
traumaRUs, MSN, APRN
88 Articles; 21,268 Posts
I work in a specialty practice and we chart (computer) as we see patients.
I chart as I see patients as well, but that doesn't leave much time for answering messages, going through transferred records, dealing with labs, dx results, writing and reading referral letters, refilling meds, FMLA and disability paperwork. So, admin time would be great, especially since the MDs in my practice get it.
Dixiecup
659 Posts
I work in a rural family practice based on income. I see 25-30 pts a day and they are all complicated trainwrecks. I try to chart as much as I can as I see the pt but it's just not able to be done when you have to get to the next pt over and over.
It is very frustrating because I am a very organized person and when I'm done at the end of the day I want to be DONE! But it doesn't work out that way with seeing so many pts. You can barely eval, dx and treat in the 8 minutes you get per pt. and if something out of the ordinary comes up you have to deal with, well the whole day is behind and charting is just a pipe dream.
I truly wish we had administrative time but we don't. so a lot of times my work goes nome with me and I hate it! sometimes I try to get in early to try and catch some up but I hate that too. I have to be at work at 9am and by gosh that's what time I want to get there!
The problem for me is, I love this job and I will work here until the day I die, it's just this charting stuff that really needs to get worked out!
resilientnurse
269 Posts
This is still a relevant issue. I get no administrative time either like the OP. However, there are quite a bit of "no shows" which allows me time to complete charting. But I almost always finish charting at home during my personal time. Fortunately though, the organization I work for has a nice size staff of receptionists, medical assistants, nurses, case managers, peer advisers, and therapists that I can lean upon and delegate work to. The down side is that because I do not have dedicated administrative time my sessions are marred with frequent constant interruptions for signatures all throughout the day. Everything is always supposedly urgent. I suppose I could schedule myself some administrative time. It would not stop the interruptions though.
RN623
12 Posts
I'm fortunate to get admin time. 4 hrs per month. Better than nothing but I could really use more like some if the other responders. Oh well. It is what it is. I work primary care in an FHQC so they are multiple complaints and often complicated. I usually spend 2 hrs a night getting caught up on my charting and never really feel like I'm all that caught up. There is always some lab value or test result to respond to.
whnpsarah
4 Posts
I work in specialty and can get admin time if I see a certain number of patients a month. I don't usually take it because we get a bonus for number of patients seen over that number. My salary is low enough that I need to have the bonus to make up the difference. At this point, though, I may have to take it because we no longer have a nurse and I am having to do their job and mine too. I can't get them to see that something is going to go undone if I am doing two full time jobs.