What's your "normal" day like?

Specialties LTC Directors

Published

So today I had to talk to a CNA about her attitude. I reheorificed the conversation before having it - made sure to emphasize her many positive attributes before asking her to please "reign in her negativity" a bit. She's been very loudly negative in the hallways, within hearing of residents and families, complaining because she's RA and gets pulled to the floor a bit. Every time a new CNA quits, one of the reasons they give for quitting is "Tish," and her drama and negativity and constant complaining. When I tried to talk to her, she threw a tantrum and quit, and immediately got on Facebook and started bashing the facility and me, specifically.

I know I shouldn't take anything she said about me personally, but there's a little truth in anything a person says. One of the things she said was that I hide in my office with the door shut because I'm afraid of confrontation. This got me wondering - how much time do most DONs spend out of their offices? I've been an RN for 18 years but only in hospitals and home health. All of my DON's spent almost all of their time in their offices taking phone calls and doing paperwork. Is this the norm for LTC DONs or do they usually get out and about more?

I don't have an ADON, it's a 90-bed facility with census of 67. I have quite a bit of paperwork to do and had an open-door policy at first, but people would come into my office to talk and complain so much that I could never get anything done. So I set "complaint hours" and I shut my door when I need to concentrate.

Specializes in Gerontology, Med surg, Home Health.

Out of a 10 hour day, I spend less than 2 hours in my office. I get to work and run reports to audit everything that I need to. Then it's time for morning meeting. I like spending time on the units so I know first hand what's going on with the residents and the staff. I've always been this kind of DNS. I worked at a building once....I had been there for 6 months and never saw the DNS on the floor.

My DON is barely in her office. Maybe half the day on a "good" day where she can get work done. Other than that a lot of time is spent in the administrative area discussing things, or searching for pharm recs and other auditing fun. We've been in a lot of meetings and conferences lately (I'm one of two ADONs). She also has a lot of incident reports to review and sign after we get through with them. We have a 200+ bed facility so she doesn't get out on the floors as much as she'd like anymore. We spend anywhere from 45 min - 1 1/2 hours in morning meeting. If her door is shut it means she's doing something serious. But everyone knocks on her door every 5 seconds anyways. It's ridiculous. I understand that they don't see our side to running the facility but people have offices with doors for a reason.

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