7 months experience in jail to Home Health, advice!

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Started my first nursing job at a county jail 7 months ago. Just received an offer with a renowned home health agency in NorCal. Tried getting into a new grad program but no luck. I'm quite nervous about the lack of experience and the autonomy that comes with home health where you do a lot on your own. Any advice?

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Specializes in Travel, Home Health, Med-Surg.

Do some research on OASIS paperwork and ask for orientation/training on this and the actual job as much as possible. You will need to learn how to manage a caseload, this will come with time. Set boundaries with your pts/family. Do not give out your personal phone number. When you have medical/nursing questions call another RN or your supervisor/director (assuming they are an RN), never wing it. Save a templete for your narrative assessment and use it for updates, other assessments etc., it will save alot of time. Ask other nurses how they manage their pts, time saving strategies etc and learn from them. 

This will be a new learning curve for sure but just give yourself some time to adjust and ask ask ask, good luck!

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22 hours ago, Daisy4RN said:

Do some research on OASIS paperwork and ask for orientation/training on this and the actual job as much as possible. You will need to learn how to manage a caseload, this will come with time. Set boundaries with your pts/family. Do not give out your personal phone number. When you have medical/nursing questions call another RN or your supervisor/director (assuming they are an RN), never wing it. Save a templete for your narrative assessment and use it for updates, other assessments etc., it will save alot of time. Ask other nurses how they manage their pts, time saving strategies etc and learn from them. 

This will be a new learning curve for sure but just give yourself some time to adjust and ask ask ask, good luck!

Thanks for the advice! Do you have a template or templates you can share? 

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Specializes in Travel, Home Health, Med-Surg.

I don't have them anymore but I googled "Home Health narrative documentation" and found this one, it has pretty good examples. 

Home Health documentation pdf (homecareassociationarkansas.org)

You can also look around and see what you can find online. You will find that HH has its own way of documentation so I wouldnt waste too much time on this until you see exactly what your agency wants, also they might give you template to start with. Either way, once you have it save copys (on your computer etc) so you can just edit it for each patient/condition etc. and copy/paste to the documentation. Save one for each type of visit (SOC, routine, DC etc)

 

Not sure why the link won't go, you can just C/P, sorry

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9 hours ago, Daisy4RN said:

I don't have them anymore but I googled "Home Health narrative documentation" and found this one, it has pretty good examples. 

Home Health documentation pdf (homecareassociationarkansas.org)

You can also look around and see what you can find online. You will find that HH has its own way of documentation so I wouldnt waste too much time on this until you see exactly what your agency wants, also they might give you template to start with. Either way, once you have it save copys (on your computer etc) so you can just edit it for each patient/condition etc. and copy/paste to the documentation. Save one for each type of visit (SOC, routine, DC etc)

 

Not sure why the link won't go, you can just C/P, sorry

Thank you so much! I'll definitely look this up.

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