MDS Duties

[mercy1975]

I'm a DON at a 40 bed facility. When I was hired I was told I would have assistance from the ADON/MDS coordinator. Currently she does 4-5 MDS a week. I've been told that an admission MDS takes 5 hours and others take 4 hours. The charge nurses do all the assessments for all admissions.

She also does Infection Control, arranges inservices, updates orders on the MARS. She also runs off the certifications and recertifications every 60 days. We both take turns working 3 hours a week and share the times we have to fill in for other staff. It's seldom that we have to fill in.

I want to be fair to her. She does nothing else to help me. I'm overloaded. She is also a good friend of the administrator which is easily seen in the work place. She feels she has too much to do and gets extra help from another nurse to do her assessments.

Is this load too much to handle? I want to be fair with her. Thanks for your input. I really appreciate it.

[susanthomas1954]

The federal government time study estimates that an initial MDS/RAP and care plan should take 1 1/2 hours. That would also be true for annuals if done correctly, because technically they should be done exactly like a new admission. That said, I did what you describe as her job for a 64 bed facility, and can only say that she is doing a full load with infection control, MDS and ADON. She will get faster with the MDS process, but if she likes that the best of all her jobs she will spend the majority of her time doing MDS's. I left a combo job (MDS/ADON/Staff Dev/Restorative?Inf Control) to take an MDS position in a larger facility because I had to do one floor shift almost every weekend, at night. Without that burden, the job was still too much, BUT..I was self taught on the MDS process then. You might want to invest in a training seminar for her on MDS, so she will feel more confident.

ST